The Good Shepherd
by myboygeorge
Summary: When the murder of a Manhattan matchmaker gives Adam his first major case with Kevin Ryan and Lanie Parrish-Robbins, the duo of detectives must use everything at their disposal, including Adam's fiancee's painful past to find answers to this chilling case
1. A Grisly Murder

Padraig Clintock loved Saint Patty's Day and not because he was Irish as Jameson whiskey. No, he loved it because it always meant a surge in business for his boss - Melissa MacGyver knew how to play the odds and offered discounts to people looking for love by matchmaker. Most people figured that before Valentine's Day was the biggest surge of business for Match Made in Manhattan but it was in the weeks that followed, when people realized how miserable and alone they were on February fourteenth that they figured why not give a professional a call.

Tossing his cigarette butt aside and fishing out an Ice-Breaker mint - Melissa loathed that her receptionist and assistant smoked so he tried to keep it to a minimum during work hours - Padraig fished out his keys, then stopped.

'Oh Jesus. Shit, shit shit.'

He cursed as he saw the shattered glass of the small office's front door. 'Damn drunken idiots,' he sighed. That was what you got when you put your place of business on Restaurant Row, you ran the risk of the mouth-breathing beer-swillers trashing decent people's business for fun on a weeknight. Padraig got out his cellphone, dialed Melissa's number - and froze when he heard the monophonic chorus of The B-52s' _Love Shack_ coming from inside.

He craned his neck to see anything past the spider-web cracks and got his second, and much worse, nasty shock of the morning. 'Oh fuck me! Fuck me!'

Padraig saw the legs of his boss poking around from her cherrywood desk; putting his shoulder into it, he finished shattering the glass on the front door and raced into her office but pulled up short when he saw the state she was in, the smears of red on her face, the unmistakable copper-salt tang of blood and death thickly smeared on the air.

'Oh, no! No, no, no!' With shaking hands Padraig dialed nine-one-one. 'Yes, please, please help me. She's dead.'

* * *

><p>'Linds? Lindsay, my sweet little sugar plum?'<p>

Lindsay giggled as she finished brushing her teeth. Adam only called her food names when he was edgy and his official day out of uniform was definitely cause to be edgy. She spat in the sink, poked her head out the door of the bathroom and hollered across the kitchen to the bedroom, 'What do you need, pork chop?'

'Where's my lucky tie?'

'What's your lucky tie?'

Adam came to the door of the bedroom, sincerely affronted. 'How can you ask me that? It's the one I wore on our first date!'

'You may not own a lot of suits, Detective Third-Grade Brennan but you are a tie-whore.'

'A tie whore?'

'Women have shoes, men have football jerseys, you have ties. But I especially like that navy blue one with the lemon yellow teardrops on it.'

'Yeah?'

'Mm-hmm.' Lindsay wiped her mouth, then walked over to him, watching him root through his massive collection. 'You wore it with a canary yellow shirt when we went to that restaurant, The Peppermill, Victor Hammond's place. We looked at the menu and both wrinkled up our noses and decided to go to The Salt Devil on Mott Street instead.'

'You're an evil grapefruit, you know that?' Adam teased her. 'What did I have to eat at the Salt Devil?'

'You had the Cuban sandwich with pickled habaneros and I was mocking you that it was a great way to guarantee no kiss goodnight on a first date.'

'What if I did that on purpose to make you feel comfortable being on a date?'

'Did you?' Lindsay asked him, gave him a little loving swat when he shook his head. 'How did I ever fall in love with you, much less agree to marry you when you're so annoying?'

'Because I'm annoyingly handsome and charming...' Adam wrapped his arms around her, brushed his lips over hers. 'And you are the love of my life so what choice did I have but you wear you down to loving me too?'

Lindsay smiled at him and he felt a warmth bloom in his chest. It had taken Lindsay so long to be able to get to that point of casually teasing, of knowing he said things like that to her because he loved her and just loved to make her giggle in irritation at him. After everything she'd been through he knew there was no one in the world who deserved love and happiness like his bride-to-be, and Adam intended to make it his job for the rest of her life to make her happy like that.

The tender moment was broken up when Adam's cellphone rang and he picked it up. 'Brennan.'

'It's Ryan. You're rolling with me this morning, and we caught a seriously bad one. I'll meet you at your place in ten.'

* * *

><p>Ryan wasn't quite sure if it made Adam a Boy Scout or a well-prepared officer that he barely had time to pull to the curb outside Adam and Lindsay's building before he saw the young man in his natty suit complete with his field bag on his shoulder walking out of the lobby.<p>

'Aren't we the boy scout today,' Ryan commented when Adam climbed in the passenger side.

'Actually, I was up early with Lindsay. She starts a new rotation today as per her internship regs, so she's off trauma and on orthopedics.'

'Ah, the saw-bones. Those guys are nuts, man,' Ryan laughed, then cleared his throat as they headed east out of Greenwich Village, then north towards Lennox Hill. 'There was this doctor I remember Jenny telling me about, she was from a hospital in Seattle and she was this big beautiful Mexican woman who could relocate shoulders and jaws with her bare hands. What the hell was her name?'

'I think Lindsay's really liked the ER, though, the idea of being on the front-lines. She's so good in a crisis and thinking clear-headedly under pressure though I think that's more to do with her upbringing back in Seattle.'

'Callie! That was her name, Callie Torres. Jenny said watching her work was just mind-boggling,' Ryan said, slapping his palm against the steering wheel. 'Sorry, bro, Lindsay's good at the trauma medicine because she has a whacked-out religious papa who always made her feel stress?'

'You're good,' Adam chuckled,' and yes, that's what I was driving at.'

'Well, put it on the backburner for now, this is a bad one.'

'How come I'm riding with you this morning?'

'Esposito's still in Florida with Meredeth and the kids while they're on March break and Beckett and Newman were picked by Captain K-Pow to be in charge of organizing the troops for the inevitable freakout that comes two days from now on Saint-Patty's. Ergo, you are with me.'

Adam nodded, began to tune out what his fiancee was doing at work and focus on his own job so that by the time they reached the store-front sized office in Lennox Hill, he was all cop.

They were greeted outside the building at the edge of the yellow tape by a fresh-faced looking officer with the nameplate of Watkins; she had serious brown eyes beneath a bowl-cut fringe of chocolate brown bangs. When she spoke, her accent screamed of the Deep South but her tone was all business.

'Detective Ryan, Detective Brennan, this is one you'll need to see for yourself to believe.'

'You were the first on-scene?' Ryan asked as they followed Watkins into the office space he imagined had once been nice, prior to the signs of a violent end. He thought of the Dylan Thomas poem as his eyes landed on the body being covered in white cloth by Lanie and Shane, which had him lifting an eyebrow. 'Sir Weaver and Lanie? What do we owe the honour?'

'Lanie's here as my relief. I'm tapped on field time for the month.'

'Already?'

'My month starts on the twentieth.'

'Fair enough.'

'Tell Alexis we'll see you for dinner on Saturday night and the kids cannot wait to see her either,' Lanie told him sweetly as she patted his shoulder, sent him out. She let out a little sigh. 'I didn't want him taking this one, anyways. The name is Melissa McGyver, age forty-three, owner and proprietor of Match Made in Manhattan, a popular dating service.'

'What can you tell us,' Adam asked, pulling on latex gloves.

'She put up a hell of a fight but in the end, she was asphyxiated. There's considerable cyanosis to the lips and cheeks, and petechia in her left eye which point to that as cause of death. Other injuries appear to be from the self-defense wounds she incurred.'

'You said left-eye, Lanie,' Ryan clarified, not liking the sinking feeling in his stomach; the feeling worsened when he saw Lanie nod sadly and she drew back the white sheet covering Melissa McGyver's remains. What he saw had the Mini-Wheats he'd shared with Mallory and Dell rising in his gorge; beside him, Adam popped up from his crouched position like a jack-in-the-box, his olive skin going pasty.

'The killer took a souvenir,' Lanie said, 'in the form of Melissa McGyver's right eye.'


	2. Finding the Place to Start

'He took her eye.'

Adam breathed the words out, unsure if the low voice he used would make them any less real. Fresh questions began to tumble through his mind, but the only one that managed to escape his mouth to Lanie was, 'Peri or postmortem?'

'Post.' Lanie pointed a dainty finger at the empty socket. 'This is incidental spatter, not the way it would gush if she'd been alive when the killer took it out.'

'Gah.' Adam shuddered visibly. He could handle the bludgeonings, slit throats, even the gunshot wounds to head, but anything to do with eyes gave him the heebie-jeebies. 'At least she was spared that indignity.'

'You're a murder cop, Brennan,' Ryan mumbled, using his brusqueness to play off his squeamishness. 'You've seen worse.'

'When I was a kid, I got pencil shavings in my eye, scratched the eyeball above the iris on the part that's back in the socket. I've had sensitivity to eye injuries ever since, one I am not ashamed to admit whatso-frickin'-ever.'

'Fair enough. Why don't you take the guy who found the body.'

'Sounds good.'

Adam disappeared, and Ryan looked back to Lanie. 'Anything you didn't want to say in front of him?'

'He's a detective now, I'm not babying him Kevin. I'll know more when I get her checked in and cleaned up at my place.' Lanie opened her kit up, pulled out her liver thermometer. 'You wanna stick around for this part?'

'Not especially.'

Ryan looked around as CSU did their thing, photographing and preserving. He went to the desk, saw the computer hadn't been smashed. Odd, he thought. This level of violence, one would think she was protecting her information on her computer yet it hasn't been touched, or obviously tampered. He looked around, sighed when he saw all the CSU techs were occupied; Riley Fontina wouldn't be any good, he was mostly audio-video with the odd request for cellphone or credit card usage thrown in. Besides, he was at the baby-doc's that morning with Andrews anyways.

'I need a CSU over here,' he said aloud to no-on in particular and when a young man with bird-like features came over Ryan pointed at the computer. 'Who's the best one to take care of that?'

'That would be Harold, sir, and she's back at the lab.'

'Liver temp gives us a time of death between nine and ten-pm last night,' Lanie called over to him.

'Tag this unit, I want it marked priority for this case.'

'Right away Detective.'

The tech set about crawling beneath the desk to pull out plugs and cables while Ryan went back over to consult with Lanie. 'Maybe she was working late, guy tries to rob her of some petty cash and she gets whacked for her troubles.'

'You don't really believe that, do you?' Lanie asked, her pen pausing on the clipboard.

'No. No, I don't but Adam and I need to start somewhere.'

'I'll call you when I have anything conclusive to report,' she told him as her assistants came in to bag the body; while they did their thing, Ryan continued to survey the crime scene. Deciding he needed a clearer picture yet, he went into the back storage room where Adam was sitting with the ashen-faced Padraig Clintock. 'Detective Brennan,' was all he said and Adam was on his feet, murmuring to him the pertinent details of what Padraig knew.

'Mister Clintock is Miss McGyver's assistant-slash-receptionist. He mainly runs the website that brings in the business, keeps track of appointments and bookings, that kind of thing.'

'Thanks Adam. I'll talk to him now, you go make sure CSU doesn't screw around with the computer stuff.'

'Got it.'

Since Adam knew the ins and outs of tech-speak, Ryan knew it wouldn't be as though he were giving the new detective something to keep him occupied while he did the 'real work'. On the contrary, he knew how to delegate to the strongest man and Adam had done his BA in computer science before going into the academy so he knew what to look for, maybe even make suggestions to the CSU guys.

Ryan put it aside for the moment; his attention was needed here. He looked at Padraig and decided a gentle hand was best - the man was clearly in shock.

'Clintock? Where's your family from in the old country?'

'Little village in Mayo. We're fishermen, or so says my grandda.'

'Mine are from Claire.'

Padraig nodded in respect, then raked his hands over his brush-cut hair. 'God, how could this happen? Melissa is always so careful when she works late.'

'Does she work late often?'

'No. No, she only does it when we have a week-long discount running on our services. Today, Thursday, was supposed to be day four of our Spring into Love sale.'

'What time did you leave last night?'

'I had plans so I was off at six, my normal home-time hour. I met my girlfriend over on Fifth and Fifty-Ninth, by the park.' Padraig sighed, thankful he hadn't blown off her in favour of a quiet night at home. 'We walked over to Domingo's, a Cuban restaurant and then caught a late movie. We were home around midnight.'

He pulled out his iPhone, tapped a few buttons and turned the phone towards Ryan. 'Right there, my credit card charges for dinner and the tickets.'

'Thanks, Padraig. Did Melissa have any enemies you knew of? Anyone who wasn't happy with the results of her matchmaking?'

'Not that I can think of no. Do you have a card in case of I think anyone?'

'Of course. I just have a few more questions. Was the business in trouble, could Melissa have gotten in with loan sharks?'

'No, surprisingly we were actually booming. But we offer competitive rates and we do in-person interviews to make sure you're not a crazy person or something.'

Ryan nodded, made notes in his shorthand. Without missing a beat he added, 'What about any personal problems she was having, a jealous boyfriend or abusive husband, anything like that?'

'No. Melissa and her husband split up when their daughter Charlotte was still in preschool, and Charlotte's almost twenty now. Oh no! Charlotte!' Padraig's eyes went wide. 'Has anyone told her yet?'

'I don't believe so no.'

'Can I be the one to tell her? She's at college at SUNY and she's probably in her early class already.'

'I'm sorry, Padraig but we have to tell her. You can come with us when we go to speak to her.'

'We?'

'My partner Adam-' Ryan pointed over his shoulder to the office area where he could hear Adam with Lanie and the other CSUs '-and I will go together.'

'Okay. I'll go with you.'

'One more thing,' he added as Padraig stood up. 'Melissa's business was mostly done in person, correct?'

'That's right.'

'What percentage of things did you do online?'

'Advertising mostly. Melissa was old-fashioned and believed that people needed to hear a voice when they wanted to be set-up for a blind date.'

'Okay. Go wait outside with one of the uniforms until Adam and I are ready to go inform Charlotte.' Ryan could sense the man was at the end of his coherence for the time being so he fished into his overcoat pocket and came up with one of his cards. 'That's my extension at the precinct, call me if you think of anything, even if you think it's nothing it could be something for us.'

'Alright. Thanks Detective.'

Padraig went outside and Ryan could see Watkins looking after him, passing him a cup of coffee to give him something to focus on. The witness taken care of, he went over to Adam, discreetly pulled him aside to talk to him.

'We've got the wit coming with to inform next of kin. What did CSU say on the computer?'

'It's been tagged priority one, and it's on its way to the lab as we speak. We should have a client list within the hour, ninety minutes tops.'

'Perfect.'

'You think someone wasn't blissfully in love after using Melissa's services?'

Before Ryan could answer, Lanie stepped over to them as her assistants wheeled Melissa's body-bag out to the coroner's wagon with a sealed evidence bag in her gloved hand.

'Hey, I don't know if this is anything or not, but I found this piece of paper beneath her shoulder.'

'Thanks Lanie, we'll get it to the lab right away.' Adam took it, looked at it and swallowed. 'I think I know what this is.'

'Oh?'

'Yeah, see how its texture is thinner like tissue paper, and there's printing divided in columns?'

'Right.'

'I think it's a page out of a Bible.'

Ryan's throat tightened. 'That might explain the eye gouging.'

'If it does go that way, I know an excellent civilian consultant we can use.'


	3. At the Morgue

'Well, Miss McGyver, I am so sorry you had such a rotten night last night, but let's see if you can tell us a little about what happened.'

With her hair tied up under her Mighty-Ducks scrub-cap, Lanie picked up her scalpel and began her Y-cut on Melissa McGyver. She'd already input the salient data into her Audiovox recorder and taken scrapings and clippings for the CSU lab; now came the gooey part. The gentle strains of Jack Johnson on the stereo in the background to keep her company while she worked, noting and detailing the condition of Melissa's insides.

As Lanie found nothing but a healthy woman in her mid-forties who'd once had a C-section, her thorough autopsy was barely three hours long, and she was finishing her Y-cut restitch when Adam came in, eyes sombre.

'Hey Doctor Parrish-Robbins. Charlotte McGyver, Melissa's daughter is here.'

'Okay. I'll have her ready in a moment.'

Lanie snipped the delicate blue thread, and used the mortician's tricked of a marble in the right eye socket so Charlotte wouldn't have to see her mother's face mangled. When she was ready, she pulled the white sheet over Melissa's head before going to the door. She braced her hand on the door, took a breath before opening it.

'Miss McGyver,' she said solemnly to the pretty brunette whose eyes were glass and red-rimmed. 'Please come with me.'

Adam ushered her in, and Lanie saw Charlotte had a death grip on Adam's arm, her chest rising and falling in shaky jerks. Lanie stood on one side of the table and carefully yet swiftly pulled the sheet down just to Melissa's shoulders. Charlotte closed her eyes, swayed on the spot before burying her face against Adam's sturdy shoulder.

'Mama,' she whispered. 'Oh, Mama, what the fuck happened?'

'That's what my partner and I are going to find out, Miss McGyver,' Adam replied smoothly, giving Lanie a subtle signal she could recover the body.

Lanie watched him, impressed how he was understanding and sympathetic to the woman without being too emotional with her yet not distant and cold either. He was exactly what he appeared to be - a good cop.

'He's way taken, Miss McGyver,' she murmured to the deceased, 'but you should know that your murder investigation couldn't be in better hands. He learned the hard way what it means to be a good cop and there is no one finer in this city looking out for you. Except maybe my girl Katie, but she trained Adam, so there you have it. Time to say goodnight for now.'

Lanie opened the door to the refrigerated body storage unit and wheeled Melissa's body in. She closed the door and closed her eyes, let herself pray a moment. 'Dear God, please please please never let my babies see me like that.'

She puttered around, collecting her tools to be sterilized or disposed of, plugged her Audiovox into her computer station and was downloading her notes into the speech-to-text software when Ryan and Adam came back in. 'Hey, how's Charlotte doing?'

'She'll pull it together because she wants answers almost as much as we do. Speaking of answers.'

'I have a prelim for you, but there's not much to tell in there. She was in good health with no signs of cardiac disease, she was a nail-biter, she didn't use a diaphragm or IUD for her birth control and she didn't drink or smoke to excess.'

'What about the eye?'

'As I said on scene, it was removed post-mortem and fairly cleanly,' Lanie replied, reaching for her water.

'Are we looking for someone with medical training,' Adam asked, sincerely horrified by the idea.

'I said cleanly, not skillfully. The killer used a single smooth edged instrument and...you can read it in my report,' she decided when Adam turned the colour of wallpaper paste at the mention of how the eye was removed.

'Thank you, Lanie.'

'You sound just like my son when you do that, Detective Brennan.'

'Which one?' Ryan chuckled. 'You've got two.'

'Both of them.'

Adam's phone rang and he stepped away to take the call, leaving Ryan and Lanie to watch after him for a moment. 'How's he doing,' the pathologist asked and Ryan nodded.

'He's still getting his confidence up, but he's smart and he doesn't miss a trick. He's good with the weepers, too.'

'Well...'

'Well what?'

'Given what Lindsay's been through, he'd have to be good at that right? I don't just mean her being raped a year before they started dating,' Lanie clarified, 'or did you not hear what her parents put her through when they came to visit?'

'Espo told me when I was in Ireland they had a visit from the in-laws that ended in tears and heartache, but Adam hasn't said anything about it.'

'Oh.' As Lindsay had dished about it on a girls' night shortly after Valentine's Day Lanie was well informed but she was also smart enough to know when to break the vows of girl-silence. This was not one of those times, so she simply shrugged it off. 'I'm sure when Adam's comfortable talking about it, he will.'

Ryan nodded, then straightened up when Adam came back in. 'What have you got?'

'The first call was Lindsay, letting me know she'd be late for dinner. The second call was the suspicious documents tech in the lab. They want to see us pronto.'

* * *

><p>The CSU lab housed in the Twelfth precinct was laid out not unlike the Homicide bullpen, Ryan noted - it was organized in an E-shape, with each row split into rooms for different specialties. This particular morning, Adam and Ryan headed up the middle leg of the E to find Tai Sung, an eagle-eyed Korean man with a square, friendly face and a brain organized like a computer.<p>

'Good morning, gentlemen,' he said in his clipped accent that occasionally came off as snooty. 'I'm impressed with your punctuality.'

'We just left the morgue where Melissa McGyver's only child confirmed her identity. We want to get this solved as quickly as possible,' Adam replied in just as smooth a tone.

'Very well. Shall we?'

Tai gestured to his work-bench, where he had the sheet unfold and pressed between two sheets of acetate. 'I've sent blood samples for analysis to the lab already. Fortunately for us, the paper is mostly intact because it was lying on the side of the body

'How'd you hear that?' Ryan asked, though anyone with a working brain in CSU would have already passed on a juicy detail or two already.

'Colleagues chattering around the water tank,' he replied, deliberately goofing on the phrase. 'But clever banter isn't why you came running at the spedd of light to my office is it? No, you want to know about that paper.'

'Anything you've got would be useful,' Adam told him with just an edge of imploring.

'It came from a bible. Book of Revelations, rather ironically. The edge of the paper tells me it was cheaply bound but the paper itself is top quality parchment. Now for the magic light show. Here.' He put on a pair of orange plastic goggles, gave similar pairs to Adam and Ryan. 'You'll need these.'

He flipped off the lights and held up a tool, shone it over the sheet until he pointed to something in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

'Is that a watermark?' Ryan asked incredulously.

'Not just a watermark, a very specific one.' Tai turned off the light, flipped on the regular overhead fluorescent. He reached for a printout and gave them a sad look, almost one of condolence. 'I would not want to be you right now.'

Adam looked at the paper, saw the crest of the watermark and the crest on the paper were identical. 'So this page came from a bible belonging to the Pure Spirits Christian Commune. Why is that so scary?'

'Have you not seen the Dateline specials on those people?' Ryan asked him. 'They are something else.'

'Is it a cult?'

'Not a cult, per se. There's no handing over life-savings in exchange for being beamed aboard the mother ship once you taste this Kool-Aid for me. More like a, we prefer to live in God's eternal grace free of the sins of modern man, type-deal.' Ryan shrugged in a non-committal gesture. 'Do you have an address from their website, Tai?'

Tai swiveled his chair around to his computer and called up the necessary webpage where he'd gotten the watermark picture from. 'This says they are based just north of the city, in Dorwich.'

'The tannery place. Interesting,' Ryan mused as they waited for the printouts and the copy of Tai's report for their own file. 'Thanks Tai, you're a diamond, bro.'

'Tell that to my husband next time you see him.'

In the elevator on their way to the garage, Adam shifted on his feet. 'Okay, I'm going to through this out there, make of it what you will. What if we drafted Lindsay, my Lindsay, into helping us with this new religious angle?'


	4. Call It a Hunch

'Lindsay?' Ryan looked skeptical. 'She's a trauma doctor, not a forensic specialist.'

'Yeah, but her upbringing with her Bible-thumping father was more than a little bit scary and could be useful if the page Tai is currently processing is of any value to the case.'

'We can float it past her but since I'm the lead investigator, I will say no if I think she won't help us.'

Adam shrugged, headed for his desk when he stepped off the elevator with his partner. 'She may give us a fresh pair of eyes on it, maybe not.'

Ryan said nothing as he went to his desk, began to put together the request for a warrant to Judge Rona Tappin on the sales records of the Pure Spirits watermarked bibles. There wasn't much they could do until Tai was finished with the document and coudl tell them what, if any, print was still legible so they had a possible metaphorical motive. He knew as well as any good cop that when religion got mixed in with police work, things always got sticky.

Before he sent the request to Tappin, Ryan picked up his phone and put in a call to Riley Fontina at the lab.

'Cheese Whiz, what's your beef?'

'Riley, it's Detective Ryan.'

'Hey, bro, what's shaking?'

'Who was tagged for the computer and electronics on the McGyver case?'

There was a sound of shuffling papers, the slurp of a beverage. 'I've got the traffic cams from the nearest intersection to verify a few alibis, and Christie Harold has the hard-drive.'

'Thanks bro, send what you've got now, send the rest when it's finished.'

'You got it. Hey, hey a quick question for you, a daddy-thing.'

'Oh?' Ryan's lips curved in a grin as he recognized the combination of eagerness and nerves in Riley's voice.

'Yeah, Susie's getting annoyed because I keep hovering, apparently. Any tips?'

'Tell her even though she's not the first woman in the world to have a baby, she's the first woman to have _your_ baby.' Ryan paused. 'She is, right?'

'Damn right.'

'There you go. My boy Jeremy used it on his fiancee Sloan when she was about seven months and he said it really helped her understand what he was going through as a first-time daddy.'

'Good. Thanks bro, I'll send the video in five.'

Ryan hung up, then tossed a ball of wadded up paper in Adam's direction to get his attention while he was on the phone. 'Coffee,' he mouthed and Adam nodded, adjusted the receiver when his call was taken off of hold.

'Hello?'

'Hello sweetheart,' Adam replied in his best awful-Bogey impersonation, making Lindsay giggle.

'Adam, if you wanted to chat, you could have texted.'

'It's official business, and I needed to talk to in person, as it were.'

'What time?'

'Ryan and I are on a case. I can't give particulars over the phone but your...childhood experiences with the church could provide us with some insight into possible motive.'

Lindsay sighed. 'You know how I love you?'

'How?'

'Because you're the only person I can say yes to when the topic of my childhood comes up like that.'

'I love you too Lindsay. When can we meet you?'

Ryan appeared at his elbow, putting the steaming decaf latte down in front of his partner while he hung up the phone. 'The little woman?'

'Call her that to her face, I dare you,' Adam chuckled, 'and yeah. We're going to meet her at the Saint Vincent's ER entrance.'

'Good. We'll swing by Tai's lab to see if he's got anything for us first.'

* * *

><p>Forty minutes later, they were walking into a very busy day at the ER of one of Manhattan's busiest hospitals on the Thursday before Saint-Patty's. It seemed some people had decided to start celebrating a couple of days early, judging from the number of people wearing fake orange beards, green apparel and sporting various ranges of injuries.<p>

As they had magical pass-go cards, Adam walked directly over to the intake nurse's desk, tapped on the glass.

'Name and health insurance or government issue ID,' she said in a fatigued voice.

'We need to see Doctor Cannell immediately.'

'Doctor Cannell is busy, you have to wait your turn.'

Adam glanced over at Ryan, who scrunched up face face ever so slightly, jutted his chin out once. He turned back, unclipped his badge from his belt and tapped it against the safety glass. 'Nurse...Ryder, let's try this again. I'm Detective Brennan, NYPD, this is my partner Detective Ryan. We need to see Doctor Cannell immediately.'

'Of course, Detective. Right this way.'

Nurse Ryder got to her feet, and ushered them down a hallway, opened a door and Adam and Ryan watched as a woman even smaller than Lili George-Esposito barked orders while other doctors and nurses moved like lightening. At the woman's right-hand side was Lindsay, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun on the crown of her head, stethoscope in her ears as she moved the receptor over the patient's chest.

'Doctor Sabern, what do you hear.'

'A lot of yelling.'

'Tune it out, Tiger. What do you hear?'

'Clogged breath sounds on the upper right side, he's got a pneumothorax, he needs a chest tube and five milligrams of Neptoparen to prevent the blood from clotting around the bullet. We know his blood-type so we need three units of A-negative here as well in the event the bullet dislodges and he begins to expel more blood.'

'Good call, Doctor Sabern. What do you need?'

'Ten blade and a sixteen-gauge chest tube.'

'That's my fiancee,' Adam murmured to Ryan, who simply grinned.

'She's a keeper.'

They closed their mouths once more as another doctor came in, this one a tall Persian man with Power Rangers lightning bolts on his scrub-cap. 'Doctor Cannell, Doctor Sabern, what do we have here?'

'Sean Parker, thirty-five, single gunshot wound to the chest during an altercation at a bar with another man over a sports bet,' Cannell replied.

'He has a collapsed right lung, Doctor Ghomeshi. I've administered an initial dose of Neptoapren to prevent clotting, ordered three units of A-neg -'

'Why not O, Tiger?'

'We have his blood-type on file, he was a blood donor at the last clinic held here. I've also installed a chest tube to begin vacating the pooling blood in the lung.'

'Alright, people, let's move this man to the OR and try not to ruin Tiger's hard work,' Ghomeshi told the team, gave her a brisk nod. 'You didn't fuck him up any worse. Nice job.'

The patient successfully passed to the trauma surgeon, Cannell and Lindsay stripped off their protective gowns and gloves, dropped them into the medical waste bin and took a breath.

'If he lives, it won't just be Ghomeshi's magic hands. You made the call to keep the blood moving in his chest and that can be a life or death call.'

Lindsay grinned proudly, then turned to Adam and Ryan. 'Sorry about that guys.'

'Nah, it's fun watching you in action,' Adam told her, 'but what happened to ortho?'

'Cannell was short-handed and she likes me.'

'She's the only newbie in her class with a working brain under pressure,' Cannell commented, then jammed her hands into her scrub-pants pockets, came up with a raspberry Tootsie-pop. 'You need to speak to my intern?'

'Yes, I need to speak to my fiancee.'

'Oh, yes, of course. Adam the cop.' Now Cannell's smile spread warm and sweet, almost maternal to Lindsay. 'She never stops talking about you.'

'All good things,' Lindsay added. 'Doctor Cannell, we'll be just a few minutes.'

'Take fifteen, find me in the OR gallery on Mister Parker.'

Cannell left, and Lindsay crooked a finger at them. 'Come with me, guys.'

The two cops followed her to a lounge that was empty, where Lindsay swiped a card into the vending machine and produced three cold soft drinks for them. 'You said this has to do with my childhood, which I'm assuming means there's a serious religious bent to your case?'

Ryan produced the scan of the bloodied Bible page, handed it to Lindsay. 'Our lab tech determined that it is a page from-'

'First Peter, chapters two and three,' Lindsay cut them off and Ryan knew if she could pick the book out of the New Testament after a simple quick scan she was the right person to consult. 'Do you know how many times I had to read this when most little girls got to read _Twilight_ and _The Hunger Games_?'

'It was found with the body, Lindsay,' Ryan explained. 'Any insight you can offer as to how this would connect to a successful Manhattan matchmaker would be greatly appreciated.'


	5. Work and Personal Space

Lindsay twisted the top off her bottle of Doctor Pepper, took a few short pulls. 'Let me have a look, there?'

Ryan passed her the paper in its protective seal, and Lindsay looked it over, pursed her lips in thought. 'There's a passage here that's been highlighted.'

'I can see that, Detective,' she teased him, then read it aloud. ' 'Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner'. Well, that's a crock of shit. Adam knows I can kick ass.'

'I've seen you do it, too,' Adam agreed.

'Well, what I can guess based off of this is that the killer might be rather pissed off she was a woman trying to fix people up, or that she ran her own business, or that she wasn't home with children.'

'Her daughter's in college and she was a working single mother.'

'All the more reason the super conservative religious types would freak out. My father certainly did when I said I wanted a job to save for college.'

'Oh?' Ryan inquired. 'He wasn't a fan of you going to school?'

'Not just school, an East-Coast school to study biology, which according to Pastor Achan Sabern is nothing more than the degenerate blasphemy of leftists, Jews and Democrats.' Lindsay offered a sour, disgusted smile. 'I was about seven the first time I heard that.'

'Wow.'

'Back to topic. Anything else you can tell me?'

'Her right eye was taken.' Ryan showed her the picture taken by one of Lanie's assistants at the morgue. 'That's pretty clear.'

'If thine right eye offend thee, then pluck it out. Overdone in my mind, but I'm not the killer, who clearly had a reason for doing this. If I had to take a stab at it, no pun intended. I'd say someone was offended by either the services your victim provided or he was not happy with the results once he or she married her.'

'He. The force required to crush the windpipe with bare hands indicates male,' Adam informed her.

'Then going off of that, I would be inclined to think a man was introduced to his current-future wife by your victim but after the new-toy glow wore off, he was disturbed by how modern a woman she was and wanted her to be a biblical-traditional wife.'

'What does that mean?' Ryan asked.

'It means he saw her as his property, the baby factory to produce his sons and raise them to perpetuate their father's agenda. My mother and father's marriage was like that, and if the woman doesn't obey - that's the word used in the culture, obey - the husband has every right to punish her, along with her people for not raising her to listen to her superiors.'

Adam instinctively reached for Lindsay's hand, squeezed it tightly. He felt sick at the look that speaking of her family put on her face and he knew that when he arrived home, she would most likely need to cry or rant or bang him. Being the man he was, he hoped it was the third one.

'What matchmaking service did she run?' Lindsay asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

'She was the owner of Match Made in Manhattan.'

'Aren't they the ones that were under investigation a few years back?'

This perked up both detectives. 'Under investigation, you say?' Ryan said.

'Yeah, about six years ago there was a dating service used as a sex-traffic front near Dungeon Alley, and as a result all businesses with a similar license to theirs got investigated. I'm ninety-three percent sure Match Made in Manhattan made that list.'

Ryan noted it down in his book to make sure they checked the gossip sites as well as the papers; every so often they yielded some excellent information. However, the look he saw pass between Adam and Lindsay told him that it was time to go. 'Thank you so much, Lindsay.'

'I hope it helps.'

Ryan nodded, the stepped out into the hallway to give Adam a little privacy he obviously needed with Lindsay. Grateful that he hadn't had to say the words, Adam looked at his fiancee, stroked his finger over her cheek. 'I know what this cost you, my love,' he murmured to her. 'And I'll make it up to you.'

'You don't have to do that every time something unpleasant from my past comes up.'

'I can't help it. I'm a man, we want to fix things, including when our ladies have a broken heart.'

'Okay.' Because she knew he was trying with all his might not to simply scoop her up and taken her home to their safe, loving apartment, she put her hand to his cheek and patted it lightly. 'I'll be home on time tonight, I think.'

'Are you working a twelve or a fourteen?'

'A ten. I'll be home around seven.'

'Dinner will be waiting for you.'

Though he knew it was her place of business, Adam dipped his head and kissed her lightly. 'More where that came from later.' He waited a beat. 'Pun intended.'

* * *

><p>Once back in the car with Ryan, Adam glanced over and saw him nervously drumming his fingers on the wheel. 'No theories from that new info Lindsay gave us or you're having a brainstorming session?'<p>

'Neither. Just remaining quiet because I'd ask all the wrong things right now,' Ryan replied quietly. 'I had no idea Lindsay came from that kind of a background.'

Adam shrugged. 'She has her reasons for keeping it private. She doesn't want to be a freak-show and she doesn't want to be pitied.'

'Her father was a pastor?'

'Still is, and Lindsay's been trying to make amends with him, get him to see she's not going to hell for being a doctor and living with her fiance before marriage.' He blew out a breath, then relayed the story of Achan and Mara's January visit to Ryan. 'I'm still pissed about that one, how appallingly they treated her.'

'They were going to make her cook and clean and do your laundry after she came home after a day like that?' Ryan whistled with a shake of his head. 'That's...nope, there isn't a single word I can think of that would completely describe that kind of disgusting treatment.'

'And to make it worse, she's the only daughter in her family. All the other boys listened to their daddy and they were forced to shun Lindsay after she went to college. She hasn't spoken to her brothers in thirteen years.'

Ryan thought of Lanie, the hell her mother had put Doctor Oscar Parrish through when he was ridiculously accused of cheating on his wife. Lanie had sided with her father and her mother had gone back to Santo Domingo; it was the last Lanie had really heard of her mother in almost thirty years.

'I can't imagine not talking to my sisters for thirteen days, nevermind thirteen years.'

'Well, actually...' Adam let out a little chuckle as they turned into the parking garage of the precinct. 'The youngest one, Noah, he's been secretly emailing his sister from a fake account his buddy set up for him. He wants to get out too, study literature at Washington State and he's been sending questions about how she saved without their father getting wise to it.'

He paused as a thought struck him. 'What if Melissa was into something that Padraig didn't know about? What if he only knew about the clients she wanted him to know about?'

'That's a very real possibility. Hopefully when we get upstairs, there is a nice shiny warrant waiting with our names on it so we can get into the computer and get the client list.'

Fifteen minutes later, Adam was hovering with a decaf latte in his hand while Ryan booted up his computer to check for the writ from Tappin. 'Dude, what do you drink decaf for?'

'I can't handle stimulants like caffeine over long periods of time. I think it's why I was so angry as a uniform. Too much caffeine.'

'Fair enough and- yes! Tappin came through.' Ryan pointed both his index fingers at his screen. 'We have the warrant to access the client list off of her

'You want me to goose Riley?'

'No, Riley has nearby traffic cams, this went to Christie Harold. She sounds like a Valley Girl, but she knows her shit.'

'Alright, I'll take the computer, you take the gossip lists about Match Made in Manhattan being under investigation for illegal business dealings. I'll be back in a few.'

'Oh, here. Take this.' Ryan reached into his bottom desk drawer, came up with a small package wrapped in bright pink paper with blue bubbles all over it. 'It's for Riley. Well, Andrews, but Riley too, from all of us.'

'All of us?'

'Yeah, the family. Oh, which reminds me, you owe me your share of the gift price. Ten bucks, whenever you can.'


	6. A Little Sensitivity

Had Ryan known how lengthy Melissa McGyver's client list was, he might not have been so eager. When he walked into Christie Harold's lab, he bypassed the half-inch thick file folder in favour of the slimmer ten pages in the printer.

'Not what your looking for, Irish,' Harold told him when his fingertips were half-an-inch from the paper-tray. 'Yours is on the other bench.'

'That one?' Ryan squawked when he realized the brick-like dossier was for him. 'Holy hell, how the hell are we supposed to get through this with two people?'

'That would fall under your department, Detective.'

'Thanks Harold.'

Ryan took the file with him back upstairs to the bullpen and groaned when he saw Beckett there, talking to Adam. 'Kate, don't tempt us, pretending like you're available to help,' he whined. 'It just makes it even worse to deal with.'

'What?'

'This is Meliss McGyver's client list.' He held up the folder, wiggled it back and forth. 'Her killer is possibly in these pages.'

'So? Adam was just telling me about the bible page you found under the body as well. Cross-reference the list with the people who've purchased that bible within the last three months.' Beckett shook her head like she couldn't believe she even had to say it. 'Come on, Ryan, is your brain still in bed with your wife today or what?'

'Apparently.'

'Alright, I have to run, have to go screen cadets at the Academy.'

'Oh, please can I come with you?' Ryan asked and Beckett gave him a weird look.

'Why do you not want to do the legwork on this case? Are you and Adam not getting along at recess, Detective?'

'No, it's...religious cases always weird me out,' he confessed. 'I never know what to do and not to do that might offend people.'

'Well you'll have to suck it up and deal.'

'Right.'

Beckett patted Adam's shoulder, gave Ryan a little 'straighten up' jab in the ribs as she headed for the elevator; the moment the doors had closed Adam gave Ryan a similar look. 'That not the reason, is it?'

'I didn't want to say it in front of Kate but no, the truth is I'm worried that if we keep using Lindsay as a consultant it will be ripping open old wounds she just wants to stay closed. I saw the look in her eyes when she was talking about her past and I don't want to be the guy who puts it there.'

'Kevin.' Adam stood up so they were eye to eye. 'Lindsay is far more capable than a lot of people give her credit for. She'd have to be to survive being raped by a classmate from medical school and then have her family turn their backs on her when she needed them most.'

'Oh, shit, Adam! That just makes me feel even worse.'

'Why?'

'I'm not quite sure but it does.'

'Lindsay will tell me if she wants to stop. She knows her own boundaries, what she can handle and not handle.' Nonetheless, Adam frowned a little bit. 'I know she'll be angry at you if you say stop using her as a consultant without telling her why beforehand. That's never a good idea.'

'Says the voice of experience?'

'Oh, big time. I got us tickets to see Silver Bullet when she was finishing her finals last May, and the only night I could get the tickets for was the night of her last exam. I gave the tickets away when I heard her saying how much she just wanted to crash and I didn't tell her, and when she asked me what time we should start getting ready for the concert, she tore a strip off of my hide like you wouldn't believe. I actually had to sleep on the couch that night.'

Ryan laughed a little. 'Alright, noted.'

'The worst thing you can do with Lindsay is treat her like a fragile broken doll. She doesn't want that, she wants normal. She _has_ normal now,' Adam amended, 'and she wants to keep it that way. So.'

He plucked the file from Ryan's hand and opened it to page one. 'Let's get started on this, shall we?'

* * *

><p>When her shift was finished just after six pm, Lanie tugged off her scrubs in the locker-room of the morgue and decided to skip the slightly-more-than-a-leaky-faucet showers there in favour of a full-jets jacuzzi bubble-bath at home. The idea of going home to an empty house - the kids were visiting Dave's parents in Albany for the second half of their March break and her Italian Stallion was on the swing shift - was outweighed by the bliss of getting to parade through the house naked while she waited for her bath-tub to fill up. She loved her family and her husband beyond words but after catching a case like Melissa McGyver's this morning, she was in need of a little alone time, or as Finn had cleverly started calling it, her A-Lanie time.<p>

She was debating wearing her jacket or stuffing it in her bag and picking up a bottle of wine to enjoy with her soak when she heard her cellphone go off; a quick glance at the caller-ID had her smiling.'

'Hey girl, how are you?'

'Oh, hi, Lanie?'

'Yes.'

'It's Lindsay. Lindsay Sabern, Adam's fiancee?'

'Lindsay, I know it's you. Caller-ID sweetie,' Lanie laughed, 'and besides, we're friends now, right? I recognized your voice.'

'Sorry.'

The monosyllabic answer delivered in the distracted tone had Lanie's radar going off. 'Lindsay? What's wrong?'

'Just feeling out of sorts, thought I'd ask if you wanted to get together for a drink on your next day off. If not I understand.'

'Lindsay.' Now it was the sisterly-protective radar going off in her head. 'What's wrong,' she repeated.

'Don't let me keep you, you can text when you have a moment-'

'Fuck that, girlie. I am coming over to your place for a drink now. One-oh-seven Waverly Place, right?'

'Yeah, apartment three-'

'Three-J, I remember dropping you off there after Sloan's birthday party. I'll see you soon.'

The subway ride from the morgue to Greenwich Village was a short one, so Lanie decided to get that bottle of wine and a few girlie snacks. When she buzzed the door, Lindsay let her in and answered the door looking rather wrung out, telling Lanie her instincts were dead on.

'Hey, girl.' Lanie gave her a wide and friendly smile, despite her own fatigue of a long day, and held up the bag from Green Traders Fresh Market. 'I brought snacks.'

'Good. If I have someone eating near me, maybe I'll eat too.' Lindsay stepped back in welcome, took the bag from Lanie's hands and began to unpack it. She saw some farmhouse cheddar, a pound of fresh strawberries, some kind of cracked-wheat bread and other sundry treats. 'Adam and Ryan are working late and I didn't want to be alone. I know that's childish and I'm sure you have plans and-'

'Lindsay.' Lanie stepped over to the table where Lindsay was unpacking the goodies. She took the other one so Lindsay essentially had to look at her. 'What's wrong?'

'I lost a patient today, after I did everything right according to my resident and the surgeon.' She visibly slumped, shoulders shaking. 'I can't stop going over and over in my head if I did the right thing, though, if I prescribed the right blood thinner to prevent clotting or if I didn't drain the blood the proper way and my resident was just letting me play-pretend like I was a hero or something and-'

'Sweetie, sweetie, take a breath. Calm down.'

'I can't calm down!' Lindsay fought to shake off Lanie's grip which had suddenly tightened. 'Let go.'

'Not a fucking chance. Where is your corkscrew?'

'Drawer to the left of the left kitchen sink.'

Lindsay sat at the table, watching Lanie move efficiently around her kitchen. 'Cannell, she's my resident, she is really good at telling you when you're a fuck-up, but I've seen her tell someone who is too cocky for their own good they are great and then tells them they have to tell the family they killed their mother or father or other loved one.'

'What did Cannell say to you when you learned your patient died?'

'That I did everything right in the ER and he died because of an undiagnosed heart-defect when he was in post-op.'

'Would she bullshit you in a situation that serious?'

When Lindsay shook her head, Lanie let out a little breath. 'Then you have to believe the next one that comes through the doors of the ER is going to come to you and you will be able to tell that family their loved one is going home in a few days. Now have a drink and we'll talk about something happy so when Adam comes home he can comfort you the way all men like to cuddle their women.'


	7. Cheer Up Dinner

'That's it, I quit, no more.'

Adam ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, pulled away from the computer screen. It was nearly eight-thirty, three hours past his end of shift and his eyes were burning like he'd used rubbing alcohol on his contacts instead of saline. 'We've been going over and over and over all those clients lists and nothing is popping.'

'I hear you, man.' Ryan leaned back, groaned and looked at his watch. 'I gotta get home soon. I promised Mallory and Dell bed-time stories.'

'Awfully late for the young'uns to be up on a school-night.'

'March break. Jenny took a week's holiday to be home with the kids since she's been teaching the birthing seminars the last few weeks, but I have to keep my promises too. We'll call it a night and pick up tomorrow. You have any plans with Lindsay tonight?'

'I'm going to make her dinner.' Adam let out a sad little sigh. 'She called me on her way home from work. The guy we saw her with this afternoon, he died two hours after surgery.'

'Oh shit.' Ryan gave him a sympathetic look. 'Is she okay?'

'She said she was going to relax in the bathtub, maybe have a nap or read a book, hence the lack of communication. I want her to get some rest. Maybe I should stop at the market, get one of those rotisserie chickens she likes, maybe some onion rings and spinach salad to go with it.'

'You're a good man, Adam. I'll see you in the morning.'

'Seven-thirty, I'll get the coffee.'

'Even better.'

Within the half-hour, Adam had shut down his computer and had made the subway downtown in time to make it to Green Traders Fresh Market and get the far-famed rotisserie chicken, the spinach salad and onion rings, even three servings of Lindsay's favourite strawberry-marscapone mousse; two for them to eat and one for her to have as a midnight snack. When Lindsay was feeling down and needed a late-night treat, she always when for sugar.

He arrived home at just a few minutes past nine, and his plan to make Lindsay dinner while she rested was thrown completely out the window when he heard the sound of two women giggling at a sitcom. When he heard the voice that wasn't his fiance, Adam coudl only grin.

'I don't care how many times I've seen this episode, that line kills me every time.'

'Put her in a catapult and see how far she flies. Yeah, that's good, but the best is the ending.'

'Shh! I don't want to fast-forward it. Hey, honey!'

Lindsay's voice was considerably more chipper and perky than when she'd called him at six that evening, so whatever magic Lanie had worked made Adam very, very thankful. He came into the kitchen that opened into the living room and chuckled when he saw the girls were sitting on the couch side-by-side with glasses of wine while they watched, of all things, _Two and a Half Men_.

'Don't worry, Detective,' Lanie told him, seeing where his eye went to the bottle of merlot on the table between their propped-up feet. 'I didn't get your bride-to-be hammered after a hard day. We're still on our first glass.'

'Fair enough.' Adam set the grocery bags down on the kitchen table and walked behind the couch, gave Lindsay a kiss. 'I got food, or did you two already eat dinner?'

'Cheese and crackers and fruit isn't dinner, so we could probably do with a snack.' Lindsay turned around to look at her man. 'You don't mind if Lanie stays do you?'

'Of course not. Just remember, if she wants to make it a sleepover, I don't share.'

'Dave's home at eleven tonight, and we're kid free so no sleepover tonight.' Lanie winked, reached for the wine bottle to top off her glass. 'Adam, I got you a bottle of sparkling cider, it's chilling in the fridge.'

'You're very sweet, Lanie.'

'Aw, thanks Adam. Now shush, this is the best part of the show.'

Knowing the food would keep for a moment, Adam poured himself sparkling cider in a wine glass and parked himself on the floor so he could pillow his cheek against Lindsay's knee. He loved the feeling of her shaking with laughter; too often in the early days of their relationship he'd seen her shake with tears.

He suddenly recalled when they'd gone on their third date - he'd gone to visit her in New Jersey and they'd taken a long walk in the brisk December evening where Lindsay had told him everything about what she'd gone through just a year before. When she'd assumed he'd be either scared shitless or bizarrely turned on, thinking he'd have an easy in with her, she'd learned she wasn't dealing with some regular cement-headed frat boy of a cop. Adam had simply taken her into his arms and told her she sounded like she could use a hug. It had shattered every defense she had against him and she'd trembled from weeping against his shoulder.

With a contented sigh, he nestled against her knee, felt her deft doctor's fingers stroked over his hair; the tenderness of the moment had Lanie feeling a little like an intruder. Easing away, she went into the kitchen and poked through the bags Adam had brought home, began to put together the table for them to have dinner to give them a little alone time. When the chicken, salad and onion rings were all on the table, she glanced over and saw Adam had snuggled up to Lindsay fully on the couch, his hand on her belly in a show of pure love and intimacy.

As Lanie could tell the need for a new topic of conversation was very high, she cleared her throat when the credits on the show rolled and said, 'Dinner is served.'

Both glanced her way, rising from the couch as Lindsay told her, 'Lanie you didn't have to do that.'

'I wanted to. You both looked like you could use someone to help you out.'

'Thank you,' Adam replied gratefully. 'We definitely appreciate it.'

He took a seat with Lindsay while Lanie sliced the modest chicken, passed around breast meat first before offering legs and wings. The clinking of the silverware interrupting the conversation, the chomping noises of a meal enjoyed made Lindsay feel a thousand times better than she had when she'd arrived home and heard the nasty ringing of her father's voice in her ears, the words a mental recording of her parents' visit from two months ago.

_You have a job to do Lindsay and why was she so upset over people who weren't her family, there's no need to carry on so childishly...good girls listen to their fathers and wives take care of their husbands...you better practice for when you are married_

'Yo, banana.'

'Huh?' Lindsay looked at Adam, who was giving her a sternly loving look.

'I know that face. You don't need to dwell on that. You've hurt enough today losing a patient.'

'I love you Adam.'

'I love you too, Lindsay.'

Lanie glanced between them, mouth full of chicken and spinach. 'Did I miss something?'

Lindsay gave Adam's hand a squeeze, letting him know in that single gesture she was okay to talk about it and so she refreshed Lanie on what had happened during her parents' visit in January. 'Anytime lately when I have a bad day, all I can hear is his voice in my head. Usually it's not too bad, but today...'

'Today your resident said you did everything you could to save his life and those are the days that are hardest to swallow,' Lanie concluded with a sage nod. 'Thankfully good friends and chicken are not.'

'That's true,' Lindsay laughed, then glanced at Adam and frowned. 'Hey. If I'm not dwelling on it, you're not dwelling it either.'

'No, not that, it's the case. We are trying to figure out who could have had that much hatred for a woman who spent her life making people happy. Ryan told me about a similar case they caught a few years ago around the same time that the first Nikki Heat movie was going into production.' Adam scratched his chin. 'Melissa McGyver wasn't the dollar store of matching making but she also wasn't in the seven-figure-salary clientele either.'

'And there's the bible page to contend with and the nasty symbolism to her eye,' Lanie added.

'What if that's not an anomaly, Adam?' Lindsay snagged an onion ring from his plate, crunched as she thought. 'What if that's the clue?'

'We're looking at clients who purchased that bible, cross referencing.'

'But what if Melissa is- or was - a supporter of that church through donations? Hell, what if she was a member or she grew up there?'

'That's another line we're looking at, but nothing has popped yet. We're waiting on the credit card and phone companies to get back to us. In the mean time.' Adam stood up, cleared Lindsay and Lanie's empty plates. 'Can I interest you in strawberry mascarpone mousse for dessert?'


	8. The Quiet Moments

When Lanie had gone home, Adam and Lindsay tidied up the kitchen together, then because he knew they both needed it ran the water for a steaming hot shower together. He knew she probably wanted sex but as they weren't always fans of water-sports, Lindsay would know this wasn't a ploy - when it came to just loving the other's presence, their go-to play was a steaming hot shower together.

'Do we have any of those oils left from when Alexis and Sloan gave you that toy box?' he asked and Lindsay shook her head.

'We used the last of it on Valentine's Day and I keep forgetting to restock it.'

'Okay. Come on.'

Adam shoved aside the shower curtain, held out his hand to her and taking a bracing breath, Lindsay put her hand in his. He drew her close so there was barely enough room for a sheet of paper between their bodies. 'This is nice,' he murmured to her, looking around at the shelves. 'Where is the soap?'

'Oh, right here.' Lindsay passed him the bottle of verbena and lime shower foam, and a loofah. 'I still can't believe you don't think that scent is too girlie for a cop. A murder cop at that.'

'Not at all. It smells like you.'

'Naw, what a guy.'

Adam grinned, lathered up the soap, and with the water dripping over their bodies he smoothed his hands down her back, massaging the skin gently as he reached her hips, then went back up to her shoulders and the curves of her neck, the angles of her shoulder blades. He'd showered with girlfriends and one-night stands alike, but there had never been this level of care taken with them before, this kind of consideration for showing them that intimacy wasn't always about sex, it was about being vulnerable with another person and letting them in.

And it wasn't just that Lindsay had let him in, he thought, watching how her head lolled forward and he continued to rub the bubbles over her soft skin. He'd let her into himself as well - he'd done things in the past he wasn't proud of and despite the fact he hadn't been criminally charge with the death of a married ex-lover's husband, it was still hard for him to think about his actions there with a clear conscience. There had never been anyone in his life until now that he wanted to do share those part of himself with, who would just listen and let him get it out, nor was there any woman in his life that brought out the tender, gentle loving side the way Lindsay did

He turned her around and knelt in front of her, smoothing his hands over her legs from hip to ankle and back up. He felt her tense a moment, then sigh in pleasure when his mouth grazed over the outer side of her thigh near her knee, and it was gone when he rose back to his full height in front of her.

'Your turn,' she murmured in a voice thick with need for him. Adam Brennan stirred somethign within her she never thought she'd feel again, Lindsay thought as she squeezed pale green liquid soap into the palm of her hand and swiped over his broad shoulders with the loofah as he'd done for her. He moved something in her that she'd thought had been gone for good after she'd been raped; therapy had told her it was still there, just dormant, a line which Lindsay had thought was a crock of shit until Adam.

They'd taken it slow and because of that, she'd been able picture herself kissing him and touching him, and even making love with him without feelings of embarrassment or shame or fear. In fact, he'd brought out quite the opposite in her - she wanted to feel the sizzle with him, and when they'd finally made love for the first time, he'd been so sweet and patient with her that Lindsay had actually wept because he overwhelmed her with his love. Even better than that first night was what they had now, these moments where they could soap up together and move into the bedroom with Lindsay initiating it.

Not today, of course, as this was new information Lindsay needed to process, to talk to him and her therapist about.

'There,' she said in a tone she hoped was light as Adam turned around to face her again. 'You're all set.'  
>'Thanks, Linds.' Adam pulled her in tight for an embrace and rather than letting go after a few seconds, he just held on to her, stroking his palms over her back and reveling in it when she did the same back to him. He let his hands drift down to her hips, held her close against him. 'I'm sorry you had such a shitty day.'<p>

'Me too, though from the sounds of things yours wasn't much better.'

'I've had better days on the job. You know, gang-bangers who got what they deserved and that kind of thing.' He slipped his hand between them to cup her breast, cursed lightly when he saw her shake her head. 'Fuck, Linds, sorry.'

'No, no, Adam. She tipped her head back to look at him, gave a soft little smile. 'It's okay. I want you to, just not in here.'

'Are you sure?'

At her nod, he kept his hands where they were and instead lowered his head so his lips grazed hers, then stayed there for a sweet, intimate kiss. Her mouth was lush and soft beneath his, and at her quiet moan of delight, he slipped his hands to cup her bottom and pull him tight against her.

Lindsay thought she might melt into a puddle from the heat he called up inside her body; yes she'd turn into a puddle and slip right down the drain. 'Adam, she murmured when he moved his lips over her jawline. 'Adam-'

'Yeah?'

'The bedroom, remember?'

'Sorry. Right.'

Lindsay pecked his lips, then gave him a little pat on the backside herself. 'Want me to wash your hair?'

* * *

><p>'And then Alyssa said when they are home, they are probably going to move to a new house.'<p>

'Oh yeah?' Ryan lay in the twin-sized bed with Mallory - when has his little baby girl gotten to be six years old on him - and listened to her recount the goings on at the hospital play-centre. She'd been enrolled in the Big and Little Readers program along with Dell, Nessa and Heddie; as they were all natural nurturers, it was a near perfect fit and Ryan loved hearing the stories of the children they spent time with.

'Yeah, she said they have been looking at houses. Daddy?'

'Yes, Marsh-Mally.'

'I don't want to go back to school on Monday, I want to keep doing the reading-buddies thing.'

'Ah, but then if you don't go to school, for one you won't know how to read even more difficult, grown-up books and another, you won't have any good stories to share with the people you're reading to.'

Mallory wrinkled him her nose. 'Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Do we have time for one more chapter?'

'Sure, sweetie.'

'Daddy?'

'Yes, Mallory.'

'Did you have to go to the dead-house today?'

Ryan let out a laugh, stood up so his daughter could turn down her bed. 'The dead-house? Who taught you that word?'

'Violet and Carey. They said that sometimes a morgue where Lanie and Shane work, that it's called a dead-house or the last train station, or on Hallowe'en it's Hotel Zombie.'

'I think they've been pulling your leg, but the first one is right. Why do you ask?'

'Because you smell funny.'

Ryan made a show of sniffing at himself, pausing and sniffing again that made Mallory laugh. 'I thought I smell like me.'

'No, I can smell that funny smell on you, all the special chemistry things that Lanie and Shane use when perform an auto-topsy.'

'Autopsy, Mally, and yeah, those things stink.'

'Are you close to catching the guys that did it?' Mallory asked as she scooted under the covers, found her stuffed toy of the night; she kept them on a rotation so they wouldn't get jealous of each other. 'Do you have a suspect yet?'

'No, no suspects yet, sweetie. She was a well-known lady so we're trying to figure out who had a reason to hurt her.'

'Oh. Well, I'm sure you'll find them tomorrow. Now is it story time?'

'Yes, it's story time.' Ryan produced the copy of _The Adventures of the Dread Pirate Valentina_, one of his daughter's favourite series. 'Where did you leave off?'

'Ummm, Valentina and her crew had just landed in Jamaica and were trying to bargain with the guy at the docks for the tea they'd brought over from Bell-sham.'

'You mean Belgium?'

'Yeah, that one.'

'Alright.' Ryan knew the spot was the opening of Chapter Six, so he thumbed open the book and cleared his throat. 'Mind if we start at the top?'

'Not at all, Daddy.'


	9. Details to Follow

The next morning, Lanie stepped out of the shower to the smell of oatmeal which made her laugh. 'Oh David, you charming old man in a young man's hot body,' she murmured to herself as she dried her hair, pulling it into a stylish queue and selecting a warm sweater and dark jeans.

When she stepped into the kitchen, she wasn't surprised to find Dave was spooning their oatmeal into bowls and adding slices of banana and a teaspoon of brown sugar, two for her. As young and vibrant as he was, Lanie knew when it came to breakfast Dave was an old-school grandpa - high fibre was the word of the day, with some fruit and brown sugar for sweetness.

'Mmm, good morning,' Lanie cooed at him, wrapping her arms around his waist as he set their bowls down.

'Yes, it was,' Dave replied, thinking of the delightfully passionate and very loud wake-up sex they'd enjoyed. 'How was dinner with Lindsay and Adam last night?'

'Good. Lindsay was feeling a lot better even before she got home. I think she just needed someone to talk to.'

'Why not Sloan or Alexis?'

'Alexis is at a conference until Saturday which explains why Shane is so cranky and Jeremy and Sloan went with Sloan's mother to visit family in Lisbon for two weeks.'

'Oh fun.'

'Makes me even more excited for our trip coming up in April.' Lanie looked at her oatmeal and despite the fact she liked it now - weeks of Dave pushing it on her when she'd been pregnant all three times had made it an acquired taste - she still gave it an initial poke like it was going to grow fangs and bite her. 'Why do you make me eat this crap?'

'So it will make you crap like clockwork. No one likes a gassy ME, the autopsy smells are bad enough.'

'Delightful, Dave,' she teased him as she dug in, and they talked about getting ready to visit Lanie's father for Easter just three short weeks away while they had breakfast. When they were done, Dave scooped up their dishes while Lanie gave him a kiss and reminded him to get some rest since he'd be doing the late swing shift that day before a glorious two days off.

In half an hour, Lanie was at the morgue, changed from street clothes to scrubs and finalizing her report for the detectives - the graveyard shift in the lab had been slow for new cases which meant her tests had been completed in a timely fashion, and she was able to add the information on Melissa McGyver's blood-work and tissue analysis to complete her report.

As she knew the guys had a busy morning, rather than making them come to her she picked up the phone and dialed Adam.

'Brennan.'

'Hey, it's Lanie. I've got the finalized report on Melissa McGyver, but I know you're busy so I'll give you the highlights.'

'One second, Lanie.' There was a pause and a click, and when she heard Adam's voice echo along with Ryan's she knew she was on speaker phone. 'Okay, Ryan's here, go ahead.'

'Her blood-alcohol levels and stomach contents indicate she had dinner consisting of fish, green salad and white wine around five pm for dinner, and there were no pills or controlled substances in her system. She took a hormone pill for her birth control and she'd had sex within twenty-four hours of her death as indicated by the spermicide residue found in the vaginal cavity.' Lanie paused to take a sip of water. 'She also had toner under her fingernails, probably from changing a printer or photo-copier cartridge, or handling something with fresh newsprint that hadn't set yet.'

'What about the eye?'

'Melissa was slightly myopic and wore corrective lenses for reading but she didn't have them in when she was killing, meaning she was probably wearing glasses.'

'CSU found none at the crime scene, she may have taken them off and put them in a drawer,' Adam murmured. 'Anything else?'

'Not at the moment, but I'll keep an eye out if anything pops.'

The detectives groaned at her bad joke, thanked Lanie for her report, and hung up; Adam left his spot at Esposito's desk - it made sense to be over there since he was working with Ryan for the week the handsome Puerto-Rican was on vacation with his family - and looked at the murder board, made the amendment to the timeline.

'So we've got the victim having dinner around five pm, which Padraig said she did on nights she knew she was going to work late,' he said, scanning the board. 'Have we seen any pops on her credit card or debit account for anything?'

Ryan paused a moment, and looked through the financial statements. 'Yeah, on her company credit card, it says she paid for dinner at five-forty-one at Tanzania Grill. Twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents.'

'Okay. We'll make a quick stop there. Stop or call?'

'Stop. After we finally made it through that list of names on the client and bible sale cross reference, we came up with four hits. And they all live in Manhattan which is a plus, but we're going to take the restaurant first, see if that gives us an indication which way to go.'

Adam nodded, then felt a rush of pride when Ryan added, 'You're talking to the waiter. You have that aw-shucks, just doing my duty thing that you're so good at that people warm up to really easily. Be a hippo, right?'

'Right.'

* * *

><p>The Tanzania Grill was less than two blocks from the crime scene, which told the investigators that Melissa had walked there and after a quick mention of her name to the hostess, they were sent right in to see the manager.<p>

'Please, gentlemen, have a seat.' Luca Tallish gestured to the two chairs in his cramped office. 'I would normally say that I hope Melissa isn't in trouble, but if you are here, I know that would be a waste of time.'

'She was murdered Wednesday evening,' Ryan said bluntly, and Luca's broad shoulders sagged.

'I am sorry for that, truly,' he replied sadly. 'She was such a nice lady. Good customer, good tipper, always had something nice to say even if she was having a bad day, you know? Just that kind of person. She would always recommend my place to people who met through her business and I used to joke I should start offering the McGyver special to her. What...what happened?'

'She was attacked in her office,' Adam told him; the man was clearly sad enough without hearing the details of how she'd been mutilated. 'We know she had dinner here around five that evening before returning to her office and we were hoping to speak with the waiter who looked after her.'

'Of course.' Luca turned to his computer, fired up a program to view the day's business. 'That would be Carmine. He is on the floor, I'll get him for you.'

Luca left the office and Adam looked at the screen, gave Ryan a little elbow to the ribs. 'Look at that.'

'What?'

'See on the screen there? Melissa's table has a two on it, a one.'

'She had company.'

Luca returned quickly, with a skinny-looking Hispanic man in a crisp white shirt with a natty burgundy tie and black pants. He sported a single silver hoop on the of his right eyebrow and a stamp of shock on his face. Ryan and Adam both rose, introduced themselves, and Carmine had a seat across from Adam.

'I- Luca tells me that Melissa was killed just hours after she was here Wednesday. Was she mugged? A break-in at her home?'

'No, Carmine, it happened at her office.'

Carmine pursed his Cupid's bow mouth. 'It must have been that man who came in.'

'Man?' Adam and Ryan both leaned forward.

'Si, the man who came in. She had ordered her dinner - fish of the day grilled with Italian greens and a glass of wine, it's her usual - and a man in a dark leather coat walked in and went right to ehr table like she was expecting him.'

Ryan made a mental note to check Melissa's appointment calendar, as he asked, 'Was it a friendly exchange?'

'No, no, not at all. Melissa was too much a lady to cause a scene but I could see it in her face when the man ordered a drink that she wasn't happy to see him. I think he was an investment partner or something.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, I...' Carmine looked guiltily at Luca. 'Sir, I wasn't listening on purpose but you know that there are times when you are approaching a table and you hear things.'

'Considering the circumstances, I don't think it could be called eavesdropping, Carmine,' Luca reassured him.

'I was coming back from the bar with the man's drink and I heard the man say, you made a deal with him, he expects you to honour it or there will be consequences.'


	10. First Viable Lead

Adam and Ryan exchanged a quick glance, before Adam asked him, 'Did you hear anything else?'

'No, sir, Melissa saw me approaching and she shushed him up and they were both quiet until I was out of ear-range.'

'Was the restaurant busy at that time?'

'No.' Carmine shook his head. 'Our dinner hour begins at five but most of our clientele don't come in until six-thirty. Melissa told me once it was part of the reason she liked eating here, the tranquility away from the quiet of the office. There was a difference, you see.'

'I understand.'

'There was maybe five people including Melissa in the restaurant and the bar was not open for eating, just drinks. Why do you ask?'

'Some people like quiet places to talk about important things, others prefer the privacy of a crowd.' Adam shrugged.

'Ah, yes, Melissa fell into the first category, but like I said, she wasn't anticipating see this man because she looked very angry when she saw him sit down.'

'Would you be able to describe him to a sketch artist, maybe look through some mugshot books?'

'Of course.' Carmine nodded, pressed trembling lips together as the reality of things started to sink in. 'Is...Can I send flowers to the family?'

'Sure. We can give you that information at the station.'

'Is there anything else you can tell us about the meal, the exchange, Carmine?' Ryan inquired, though he knew the man had probably reached his limit.'

'One thing, perhaps not, I don't know. Melissa left her pen behind when she signed the check for her meal. I picked it up because I'm always losing pens to customers. I saw the name on it and it struck me because she didn't seem like the religious type, you know?'

'What was the name?'

'Here.' Carmine produced it from his apron pocket, handed it over. 'This one.'

Adam took it, and Ryan immediately reached into the field kit for a plastic evidence bag. The pen was a slim ballpoint stick with a white body and the outline of a white dove with two human hands forming the wings in a black outline was stamped above the words Pure Spirits Christian Commune & Prayer Centre.

'Thanks Carmine. Why don't you come with us now, while the details are still fresh in your mind,' Adam told him.

Carmine looked to Luca, who looked to the detectives. 'He is at your disposal. Don't worry about the lost time, Carmine, we'll work it out.'

* * *

><p>They managed to catch Ilyssa Asimov, one of the three resident sketch artists in the Twelfth, on a free moment and she was more than happy to work with Carmine on composing a sketch of the man in the restaurant while Adam and Ryan continued to speak to the four people who had popped on their cross-reference list.<p>

The first one, Ted Wilson, had gotten busted for pot possession when he was a junior at SUNY and was now a real estate agent for Elisa Coulter - no relation to Ann - and had purchased the bible as a gift to his daughter for her upcoming First Communion. He was at his children's middle school talent show taking photos like the proud papa he was from seven-thirty until well past ten.

The second one was Ava Murdoch, a distant relation to the media mogul; she'd been busted for assault with a weapon when she'd gone after a man with a baseball bat once he started making homophobic slurs about her son during a Little League game and the fact that he was raised by two women. She'd plead no contest on the grounds she was defending her her son against hate speech and had been let off by the judge with six months probation and anger counseling. Like Wilson her alibi was tight and had plenty of witnesses - Ava and her wife Debbie had been at home hosting a Parents Against Bullying meeting until nine-fifteen, and as she lived in Yonkers and her son had returned at nine-pm from a friend's house, it was doubtful she'd bent the laws of the time-space continuum to make it to to the south-side of Central Park, kill Melissa McGyver and make it back in time to tuck young master Grayson into bed with a cup of tea at nine-thirty.

'Nice woman,' Adam commented as he and Ryan slipped back into the Crown Vic, 'though you can see right away you wouldn't want to piss her off about her sexuality. Did you see how intense she got when we brought her arrest up?'

'I think it was more to the point her son was being attacked.'

'What do you mean?'

'You'll understand a little better when you and Lindsay have babies,' Ryan grinned. 'Jenny has dealt with a lot of crass and crude comments over the years being a nurse, but she had one mother tell her she didn't want Dell coming around anymore and shooting up his drugs around her son, and she she laced right into this broad, telling her that her son was diabetic, not a heroin addict at the age of nine, and if she was so fucking ignorant she'd assume it's drugs she goddamn well didn't want her son going over there either.'

'She said that? Sweet, nice Honey-Milk?'

'And I'm toning it done to the PG Reader's Digest version. She sent Mallory right out of the room so our daughter wouldn't hear her cursing a blue streak.'

'So it's like, you can say what you like about me and I'll take it, but my child is off limits and if you don't stand down, you'll get a taste of mama bear.'

Ryan tapped the tip of his nose with his finger. 'Bingo. Who's next on the list?'

'Ah, Carson Creed, thirty-eight, an accountant with Largo-Wynch. His sheet also has an assault charge, but not as understandable as Ava Murdoch.'

'Oh?'

'Mm-mm, no-no-no.' Adam shook his head. 'He went after a guy with a broken bottle at the Yankees-Red Sox riot three years ago, gave him sixteen stitches, a black eye and a broken nose.'

'Owie. He do time for that?'

'Sentenced to eighteen months, sentence commuted to probation in light of the fact that other people charged in the riot received similar sentences. He still has regular meetings with his parole officer, though, as a show of good faith.'

'What about-'

Ryan's next question was cut off when Adam's cellphone rang. 'Brennan.'

'Brennan, it's Asimov,' the lilting Lithuanian voice told him. 'I have a name for you on the sketch provided by waiter. No, _the_ waiter.'

'Your English is getting much better, Ilyssa, and might I add that was a quick turn around.'

'Beta software my lieutenant is trying out. He wants to go digital and-'

'Tick-tock, Ilyssa. What's the name?'

'He is called by Creed, first name Carson.'

Adam looked at Ryan and gave him a nod. 'We're already going to seee him. Send a copy of your report to me and Ryan and-'

'Already done, with a carbon copy to Captain Karpovski.'

'Pow, as is pow the bomb blew up.'

'Can't help it, in old country we say Karpovski. Dosvydanya.'

'Bye-bye.'

'That was awfully flirty,' Ryan teased him, then waved it off when Adam spluttered defensively. 'No worries bro, I know how much you love Lindsay. What did she have to say?'

'The guy Carmine described is Carson Creed who just happens to be the next guy on our list.'

'Score.'

The lobby of Largo-Wynch was like every other Manhattan corporate building lobby with one distinct exception - while most had discreet and frankly-weird art-sculptures depicting the abstract concepts of the company's mission statement, Largo-Wynch had a very large red-and-blue 'he went that-a way' sign that pointed people to the various parts of the building.

Despite this, Adam and Ryan went to reception where not one but three receptionists were all working like one-armed paper-hangers to man the influx of calls. As Adam had worked his magic on the waiter and Ava Murdoch, Ryan took what would more than likely be a harder target.

'Follow my lead,' he murmured to Adam as they went to the desk.

'Your lead?'

'You'll see it.

'Good morning sir.' The receptionist whose name-plate read 'Tanya Levitan' had mocha-coloured skin and lush full lips dabbed with shimmering gloss that show off her winning smile when she greeted them. 'How may I direct you, gentlemen?'

'We need to see Carson Creed.'

'Do you have an appointment?'

Ryan flashed his badge, met her smile with one of his own. 'No, but I think you can make the time.'

'Of course sir.' She punched in a code into her switch board. 'Mister Creed, it's Tanya. There are some detectives looking for you. Yes sir. Right away.'

'We're a go?'

'Yes. Go to the east elevators-' Tanya pointed them in the direction behind her left shoulder '-go to floor nine and he is in office nine-three-two.'


	11. He Ain't DeNiro, That's For Sure

Following the efficient Tanya's directions Adam and Ryan found Carson Creed in his office, having a rather intense phone conversation with someone who was not holding up his end of the bargain.

'No, no, you're still not listening, there is no way that my client's current business gross will allow for such a steep increase on the loan rate which, might I point out to you sir, you agreed would be frozen for at least thirty-six months and they are only in month twenty-two of said loan.'

Carson glanced up and waved Ryan and Adam in as he tried to get his way with the telephone. 'The best offer I will accept is a point-seven increase. You have my figures, you have their loan documents. I expect to hear from you by the close of business today.'

He hung up and briefly closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. 'The last thing I need today,' he muttered before popping two aspirin and gulping them down with a bottle of water. 'I'm sorry, did you say who you were?'

'No, we didn't.' Ryan held up his badge, pointed to Adam who did the same. 'Detective Ryan, Detective Brennan, NYPD. We're investigating the murder of Melissa McGyver.'

'No, that's not possible. I just spoke to her a few days ago.'

'She was found yesterday morning in her office,' Ryan replied bluntly. 'she'd been choked to death and she was missing an eye.'

The cops had the satisfaction of seeing the man blanch white as raw bread dough; had he not already been sitting down, Carson's knees would surely have buckled. But it wasn't shock on his face - it was panic. Pure, undiluted and unadulterated panic.

'Oh my god,' he breathed, 'my god, who would do that?'

'Well, we were hoping you could tell us about that.' Ryan approached the desk while Adam hung back like a sentry. 'We have a witness who says that you had a drink with Melissa at the Tanzania Grill on Wednesday at five pm.'

'Yes, I did, I needed to talk to her about some questions on behalf of her main investor.'

'Interesting because my witness says that he heard you say to her, and I quote 'you made a deal with him, he expects you to honour it',' he read dutifully off of his notepad. 'Does that sound familiar?'

'Yes. I represent her main investor and he was becoming irritated that she was slipping on her payments for his loan.'

'Who might that investor be?'

'I'm sorry, Detective, unless you present me with a court order I'm not about to drag his name through the mud and implicate him in a murder investigation.'

'Adam.'

'On it.' Adam made a show of pulling out his phone and genuinely asking, 'Is the judge two-two-one?'

'Two-two-four.'

Adam nodded, and stepped into the hallway to make the call while Ryan took a seat across from Carson. 'My background on you says you were involved in the Yankees-Red Sox Riot few years ago. You broke a bottle into some poor schmuck's skull.'

'Yeah, it was a stupid thing to do in the heat of the moment. It was the guy's girlfriend who convinced him to press the charges, but the judge could see that it was a stupid mistake in the heat of the moment when the rest of the crowd around me was doing worse.'

'You have an answer for everything, don't you?'

'Excuse me?'

'You were seeing Melissa over drinks for a rushed business meeting, you were just going along with the crowd, you are protecting a business interest.'

'What's wrong with being able to back up perfectly true stories?'

Ryan leaned forward, and was pleased to see that he retained the advantage of height. 'The fact that you look like you've seen the devil in the flesh when we tell you that Melissa McGyver is dead less than twenty-four hours - hell, less than six hours - after you deliver to her what sounds suspiciously like an ultimatum on a shady business deal.'

'Like I said, I was simply reminding Melissa that her investor would not be pleased if she defaulted on her loan payments. Simple as that.'

'Where were you on Wednesday evening between nine and ten-pm?'

'What?'

'As simple as that,' he said politely, easily, in the same matter-of-fact tone Carson had used. 'Your whereabouts?'

'The drunk-tank in Yonkers.'

'Oh?'

Carson sighed heavily, glanced around like there were ghosts that might overhear them. 'I had a small friendly wager going with a co-worker at our usual working-dinner pub. He'd had a few too many and was starting to get into it with some musclehead and punches were about to be thrown so I stepped in to try and cool him off.'

'I take it that didn't work.'

'No, unfortunately,' Carson replied, shaking his head. 'My friend took a swing at the musclehead, the cops were called and he wound up in the drunk-tank, and I was there trying to keep him from being charged and from spending the night in prison over a misunderstanding.'

Ryan glanced over his shoulder, saw Adam come back in with the slightest of nods. 'Do you have any proof of this?'

'Yes, I have a receipt right here.' Carson opened a locked drawer on his desk and produced a file-folder with the official seal of the NYPD on the receipt paper. 'Time stamp nine-forty-seven.'

'We'll need this to make an official copy.'

'Can you make it quick? I need to file that with accounting before next Friday.'

Ryan and Adam looked at the man like he'd sprouted a unicorn horn in the middle of his head. 'I beg your pardon?' Adam asked in genuine bafflement.

'Well the incident took place during company time, I need to file it for my expense account.'

'Yeah, you try that,' Adam said dryly, wiggling his fingers for the receipt. 'We'll do our best to make sure you have it back.'

'Thank you. Meanwhile I wish I could help you gentlemen more but I have an appointment in-' Carson made a show of looking at his watch '-fifteen minutes I need to prepare for.'

'Sure. We'll be back later with that court order you requested.'

As parting shots went, Ryan knew it was a good one because in the reflection of the office's glass door he could see Carson remained stock-still in his chair and not preparing for that Very Big And Important Appointment he had after their visit.

Adam said nothing on their way down in the elevator, took his cue from Ryan as they went into the lobby and saw Tanya Levitan there. He went over to the reception desk and smiled at Tanya. 'Thanks again for your assistance today.'

'Anytime, Detective.'

'Were you working late on Wednesday?'

'No, just until six, my usual hour.'

'Did you happen to see Carson Creed leave or return before you left for the day, say around four or four-thirty?' he asked politely, saw her hesitation between honesty to the police and loyalty to the company. 'It's not gossip or tattling if you're talking to us about him, Tanya.'

'I know, I know, it's just...my own insecurities, that's all,' she sighed, then took off her ear-piece and moved around the desk; Adam could see she was wearing stylish kitten heels that put her at about five-foot-three. 'It's hard enough for me to be away the long hours from my boys and with the economy the way it is right now, I always worry the boss will look for some reason to give me the boot.'

'I completely understand, I've had my own struggles with the higher-ups myself. All I need to know is if you saw Carson leave on Wednesday afternoon and if you saw him return.'

'Leave, absolutely. He was moving through the lobby very quickly at four-forty-five. I was taking a quick call from my oldest son, letting me know him and his brother were home from soccer practice. As for coming back...' Tanya shook her head. 'I left before he returned.'

'Okay.' Adam did the math in his head, knew that was about right for the timeline for Carson to be at the Tanzania Grill to meet Melissa at the time Carmine saw them together. He fished into his pocket, handed Tanya a card. 'You think of anything else, or you even see him sneeze funny and you think it might help, you call us.'

Adam gave her a smile, then met back up with Ryan at the door; they remained off-topic from the case until they were speeding away to their fourth pop on the cross-reference list.

'We didn't bring up the bible page,' Adam pointed out to Ryan, who merely drummed his fingers on the wheel.'

'That is incidental. You saw his face when we told him Melissa was dead and how she'd died. If he doesn't know anything about a motive for why she was so brutally murdered, my ass is a banjo.'


	12. Those Guys Again

Judge Nima Tappin was not in a good mood when Ryan and Adam finally made it to his office, and with good reason - he was forced to recuse himself as he was a client of Carson Creed's and he let them have an earful before referring them to Isaac Markaway. With the slight change in plans, they spent most of their allotted time with the judge getting him up to speed on the case. Fortunately, as Markaway was a quick study he was able to follow through with what they were looking for.

'It used to be that matchmaking was the norm back in the day, then we started choosing our own people and matchmaking was for losers or snobs, now it's becoming acceptable again.' Markaway sighed as he examined the crime scene photos. 'She looked like a pretty lady.'

'She was according to her daughter and DMV photo.' Adam thought of something Lindsay had mentioned to him. 'Sir, do you recall a little while ago, there were some matchmaking services that came under investigation because there was a company in Dungeon Alley using their dating-service advertising as a front for sex trafficking?'

'Oh, yeah, I remember that, that was actually Tappin's case and it was as brutal and nasty as it sounds. Sixty-two women thinking they'd be meeting the man of their dreams only to find out they wanted to buy an organic sex-toy.'

'A civilian consultant we spoke with on the religious angle of the case said she remembered the name coming up as one of the companies investigated to make sure everything was on the up-and-up.'

'It very well could have been, you'll have to check the public records of the investigation in Vice. In the meantime, I'll help whatever way I can to dig up dirt on Carson Creed and his mysterious investor. Money is easier to track than people these days.'

With their warrant hot in hand, the next stop was the bank used by Carson and Melissa for the business' finances. The Citi-Life Financial Branch three-oh-two-three was a squat, square building three blocks east of the Match Made in Manhattan office. The manager took one look at their warrant and was spluttering out 'how much, how many' they wanted of the business' account information.

An hour later, they were back at the precinct with Watkins, the sturdy uniform drafted in for the eye-searing paperwork they needed to cull through.

'Detective, sir, I'm not sure how much value I can be in this capacity,' Watkins protested. 'I barely made it through honours math in high-school, I studied social history at Hudson U before the academy.'

'Not to worry. Adam here is a computer nerd.' Ryan patted his partner's shoulder, then handed her a stack of papers with a green highlighter and a Post-It note on top. 'This is the account we are assuming belongs to the investor, we need to see how much she was paying them and how often.'

'I can do that.'

'Then hop to, Officer.'

With a small sliver of the paperwork pie being taken care of, Ryan turned his own attention to copies of the same records with a yellow highlighter and began to tick off when deposits were made that co-incided with client fee deposits while Adam looked at withdrawals with his orange Magic Marker. Barely twenty minutes in, Ryan was yawning in tiresome frustration. How the hell did Lili George-Esposito do this all day? More, what kind of eighteen-year-old had wanted to study accounting at university? There was a reason he paid the good folks at H&R Block the kind of money he did to take care of his and Jenny's taxes and what he was working on right now was proof of that very understandable logic.

When he took a coffee break, brought lattes back for himself and Watkins, decaf for Adam, he looked at them booth while he sipped. 'Alright, we're an hour in, what do we have?'

'Melissa made regular deposits to the account every second Friday,' Watkins reported, 'in increments of five hundred dollars.'

'Any that jumped out as being short or late or just not paid at all?'

'No, but I did notice that within the last two months, since New Years, her number dipped from seven-fifty to five hundred. That's a loss of fifteen hundred dollars since January first to the investor's payback.'

'A month's worth of payment,' Ryan mused, then looked at Adam. 'What about withdrawals?'

'No major withdrawals since January first on the business account aside from her take-home and Padraig's pay, taxes and sundry business fees like space rental, Internet, credit card fees, what have you.'

'There has to be more,' he started and Adam squawked.

'Did I say I was done?'

'No, you didn't,' Watkins murmured with a little grin as she sipped her coffee, lightly swiveling her chair.

'I said nothing since January first. December, November, those are different stories. Right after Hallowe'en, there was a six week period where every Friday when the deposits were made, there was three grand transferred out to account three-three-two-eight-one-seven-six-oh-nine at the same bank, different branch.'

'That's the account number I've got here as well,' Watkins agreed, looking at her own notes. 'Where is this account located?'

'Adam?' was all Ryan said and Adam wheeled away on his chair to the conference room's computer and when he logged himself in, keyed in the right information, he was frozen and staring at the answer he received.

'It's the Pure Spirits Christian Commune business account. The branch is located on Cayuga Street in Dorwich.'

'Son of a bitch.' Ryan rose out of his chair, as did Watkins, to stare at the screen. 'Back to them again. Watkins, can you do me a favour?'

'Sure.'

'We are waiting on bank records for Carson Creed, but I need you to do a short follow up for me with him.' He handed her the number to call. 'Tell him since he was in such a rush this afternoon, we forgot to ask him about his purchase of a bible from Pure Spirits. He's snobby and trying to cover his ass so-'

'Got it.' Watkins' brown eyes were serious beneath her fringe of bangs and she left with the card; though she probably thought it was busy work, Ryan and Adam really did need an answer on it and they wanted to discuss their case in privacy without the new uniform around.

'What are you thinking, bro?' Adam murmured.

'I'm thinking once we have a look at those records from Carson that are currently being transferred, we need to get lunch to go and head out to Dorwich.'

'What about looking into those records Lindsay mentioned?'

'We'll get Watkins on those. She seems pretty good at separating useful information from shit and being of the Youtube generation she'd know where to look.'

'Alright.'

As if on cue, as Adam him print for the records of the bank accounts Watkins came back in with a curiously proud look on her face.

'Called that Mister Carson Creed's office, introduced myself, and he said that he'd purchased no such thing nor had he ever heard of the Pure Spirits Christian Commune and he didn't appreciate being called a liar when I told him I had a credit card statement as part of the background check into the client list of Melissa McGyver's business. I'm sorry I got that screwed up.'

'Screwed up?' Ryan gave her a considering look. 'Watkins when did you leave the Academy?'

'Last June, sir, and I worked in Traffic before transferring into Homicide just after Christmas. Why, sir?'

'It shows. You just proved one very important detail for myself and my partner.'

'Oh?'

'That Carson Creed is up to something and damn determined to make it look like he isn't involved. So next time, before you think you screwed up I'll tell you when you did because you'll know by the application of my boot to your ass.'

'Noted sir.'

Ryan couldn't help rolling his eyes as he scooped up the bank files, left the conference room with Watkins and Adam on his heels. 'And stop calling me sir. I'm not that old.'

'Yes sir.'

'Adam, you're with me. Get your kit together.' While Adam put his jacket on, packed what he needed for the road trip to the bank and then to Dorwich, Ryan turned to Watkins. 'You have an angle to work while we're gone.'

'Alright.'

'You need to look into a case from a few years ago. There was a dating-service run in Dungeon Alley that turned out to be a front for sex-trafficking. There's a possibility that Match Made in Manhattan got caught in the crosshairs when they investigated several similar dating services in the aftermath for any potential infractions.'

'You want me to go back, verify, see who might have a beef from that particular time frame, if there was anything found.'

'Exactly.'

'On it sir.'

Ryan nodded, feeling secure this angle was in good hands, and breezed passed Adam who was already on his way to the elevator. 'You're buying lunch, bro.'


	13. Creepyville, NY

'Sabern.'

'Hello spring-roll.'

Adam heard Lindsay's lighthearted laugh on the phone while he waited in line at The Salamander Bakery; it was on their way out of town and Ryan knew they'd need a sugar-boost. 'Just wanted to see how you're feeling.'

'Better than yesterday. What's up?'

'I might be late tonight. Ryan and I are on our way to Dorwich. Don't know how long it'll be.'

'Okay. Just holler when you're on your way. Love you.'

'Love you too.'

Adam hung up, then stepped up to the counter to see Rosalita Esposito greeting them with a grin that matched her son's. 'Hey Rosalita, how's it going?'

'Business is good, Detectives. You want a box of sweets for everyone or are you riding along somewhere?'

'Road trip, Rosalita,' Ryan informed her from beside Adam and Rosalia nodded, began to fill a neon green pastry box with assorted rolls and other treats. 'Where's Alejandro at?'

'He went to meet my grandbabies at the airport, give my Lucita and her family a ride to their house. No, no, not a chance.' Rosalita shook her head when she saw Ryan reach for his wallet. 'I heard how you talked some sense into my boy after all that nonsense he was think about when he was on the Victor Hammond case. You let me do this one for you.'

As Ryan knew better than to argue he put his wallet away and leaned over to kiss her cheek. 'Thanks Rosie. Say hi to Alejandro for us.'

'Adios.'

The pastries served as great thinking food as the cops drove out of the city north of New Rochelle into what Adam always thought of as the pastoral beyond - he'd grown up in the city and had never once thought of it as overcrowded or noisy and that the people who liked to be away from other people were just nuts. What would happen if you got whacked on a farm out here? You could get turned into pie or a lampshade by some psychopath and no-one would know the difference because you were too far away from another living soul.

'Adam?'

He jumped a little in his seat, Ryan's voice shaking him from his hideous daydream. 'Yeah.'

'Can I have a galleta, bro?'

'Oh. Sure.' Adam passed the box over, looked at the site of the small cluster of buildings. There was fencing and yet no guards, not like on the other religious communes Adam had seen on the news. Maybe that was why they were so cut off from the rest of the world - if someone escaped, the weather did them in better than a bullet could.

'Man, these Pure Spirits people really take things to the extreme, huh? Isolating themselves into a chosen land or something.'

'Let's not judge until we get the lay of the land. Who are we going to be speaking to when we get there?'

'We are looking to speak to Paul and Jessica Bell,' Adam replied, consulting his notes. 'Paul is the head of the commune and his wife is in charge of public relations.'

'Interesting.' Ryan could feel the wheels turning in his head but as to what purpose he was still unsure.

'Up here, on the left.'

They passed along on what appeared to be a Small-Town, USA-esque main street: on the east side were various specialty shops such as a barber, electrician and plumbing, general hardware, shoe repair, while on the west side were food and clothing shops but none were name brand. On the plankwood sidewalks women in long paisley print and calico dresses walked with children of various ages. They all wore sturdy looking leather coats and boats which both cops guessed were from the tannery.

It was like a wax museum with a pulse, Ryan thought, thinking of one of his favourite Tarantino quotes, and more than a little unsettling.

They found their way to the church, a grand and glorious looking building that was probably at one time defunct and had since been repaired so it was the centre of the commune. There were cars filling the parking lot, which Adam thought a little strange.

'If they are so holier-than-thou,' he started as Ryan shut off the engine, 'wouldn't cars be a sign of pride and conspicuous consumption?'

'Possibly. Like I said we'll reserve judgment until we talk to Paul and Jessica.'

They left the car and though neither one mentioned it outright, both checked to make sure their firearms were readily accessible. The place was giving off a very eerie Stephen King 'nothing ever happens here' vibe that made the skin crawl on the backs of their necks. Heading inside, they found themselves in a warm and rather homey anteroom similar to that of San Gabriel where Ryan had attended all four of the Esposito children's baptisms as well as Tessi's first communion. The connection was instantly broken when he saw the group of men huddled in the front pews as they held some kind of council meeting. Thanks to the grand arching ceiling, the words echoed just enough for Ryan and Adam to catch a few of them.

'...When the timing...right...send for her, Jed...'

'...Too long...what if...'

'...Have faith, brother...'

Adam glanced at Ryan and cleared his throat, which had the men - six in total, he counted - glancing up and one of them, a burly chap who looked like he could bench-press a refrigerator before his morning coffee, shot out of his chair and was bearing down on them.

'Out,' he ordered. 'You have no business here.'

'Actually we do.' Ryan held up his badge for inspection. 'My name is Detective Kevin Ryan of the NYPD, I need to speak to Paul Bell.'

'No.' The man folded his arms the size of cinderblocks over his expansive chest. 'You have no business here.'

'All due respect sir, I am sworn by the City of New York to-'

'Leave. Now.'

Adam swallowed as his hand drifted to his weapon. Ryan was no pansy, but he looked like a rag-doll compared to this man; he'd be hospitalized for a week at best if things got physical. His finger was on the buckle of his holster when another man, this one trim and fit, and at least a hundred pounds smaller, appeared at the man's right side.

'Lazar, it's alright. I'll speak to them.' His voice was like olive oil, smooth and pure, that put Ryan in mind of a soap opera doctor. He had the handsome good looks of one too - early forties, the remnants of a summertime tan, green eyes clear and direct. He nudged the large man along like a stubborn dog before flashing a toothpaste-add smile.

'I do apologize gentlemen, we don't have many outsiders here and certainly never police from Manhattan. How can I help?'

'You're Paul Bell?'

'Yes, that's me.'

'Detective Kevin Ryan, NYPD.' Ryan held up his badge for inspection, re-clipped it to his belt. 'We need to speak with you regarding an homicide investigation that took place Wednesday evening in the Lennox Hill neighbourhood of Manhattan.'

Paul looked slightly baffled. 'Why would-'

'As I said, it's better discussed in private.'

'Very well.'

Without missing a beat Paul turned and walked towards the group of men and addressed them with a quiet authority that was hard not to respect. 'Gentlemen, we're adjourned. We'll meet during our regular time this evening. Peace be with you.'

'And also with you,' they chorused like schoolchildren, and filed out a side door. Alone, Paul gestured for Adam and Ryan to sit in the recently-vacated chairs. He crossed his legs and took out his cellphone, sent a quick text.

'Now, what can I do to help you fine souls today?'

'We're investigating the death of Melissa McGyver. She was the owner of Match Made in Manhattan, a dating service, and during our investigation your name came up as an investor,' Adam explained, 'and we need to know the nature of your relationship with Miss McGyver.'

'Melissa's business was a wise investment for our interests,' Paul started, then stopped when a young woman of about twenty appeared through a different side door with a tray of coffee in her hands. She set it on the sideboard and to Ryan and Adam's utter amazement, offered Paul a slight bow with words 'your grace' murmured before she retreated again. 'Can I offer you refreshment?'

'Thank you. Cream and sugar for me.'

'None for me, thanks,' Adam replied, knowing most church coffee had enough caffeine to power a small city. 'When did you first begin investing in Melissa's business?'

'It seems like it has been forever but probably about twenty years ago or so.'

'Twenty years,' Ryan repeated.

'Yes. We were profiting greatly from the sale of our produce and dairy and leather goods from the tannery, and my wife recommended Melissa as a business investment.'

'Did she?'

Paul nodded. 'She felt we owed it to her, as we were amongst Melissa's first clients.'


	14. That Wasn't in the Brochure

'You met through Melissa?' Adam was sincerely baffled by this.

'Yes. We were too spiritual for most people and not religious enough for the hard-core conservatives. The lifestyle we've made and built here, this is ideal for us, this is how we believe we should be living and not bowing down to corporate slogans as self-confidence mottos.'

'Yet you run a successful tannery,' he pointed out to Paul, who simply smiled as he composed a text message on his cellphone, then stuffed it in his pocket.

'Yes, we run a tannery, and those profits surround you right now. Last year's summer sales alone paid for new farming tools for two of our largest dairy produces, and throwing a little 'job well done' party in the town square for the families who work at tannery.'

'You have other businesses you mentioned,' Ryan said, picking up the conversational ball since Adam seemed to have some difficulty processing the information Paul gave them. 'Produce and dairy?'

'Yes. We sell to small independent grocers, farmer's markets, even a few restaurants.'

'Right, so why would you invest in something as secular as a dating service?

'As I said, my wife believed it would be a good investment and she wasn't wrong. Ah, here we are.'

The side door that the coffee girl had used opened once more, and once again the coffee girl appeared, only this time a blonde woman in her mid-forties came through with her. Like the coffee girl, her hair was long but while the wore a similar cut of dress, the older woman wore a bold red with white polka-dots rather than a muted mint-green with white paisley. Ryan had to use all his years of police training not to let his eyebrows slam through the vaulted ceiling when they stopped outside the circle of chairs, bowed slightly at the waist and murmured, 'Your Grace' to Paul. Paul held out his hand and the older woman stepped forward to take it, sat down in the chair on his right; he repeated the process with the girl, she taking the seat on his left.

'Detectives, I hope you don't mind I sent a text to my wife Jessica and my daughter Miriam asking them to join us in this conversation,' he told them.

'Of course not.'

'We've been praying all day since hearing the news yesterday online,' Miriam breathed. 'Such a tragedy, Melissa was such a nice lady.'

'You met her?'

'Oh yes, of course, she would come at my parents' invitation at least once a month to discuss business.'

Miriam looked at her father and Adam felt a tinge of uneasiness. The look was too similar to one he was used to getting from Lindsay, when they had friends over for dinner and they made tentative plans. While it wasn't the exact same thing Adam read in the exchange, it was damn impossible not to miss the confirmation in Paul's eyes.

'Yes, Miriam would often see Melissa when she would come to discuss business with us.'

'You mentioned being an investor in her business yet we have documents stating that you were loaning her money,' Adam ventured, and this time it was Jessica that replied.

'I do the majority of the accounting and public relations for the business side of things. Our church is supported through a vast on-line community and we'd given Melissa a loan for her publicity budget in order to try and keep her business going strong in this recession. People want love and they need to know that someone like Melissa is there to help them.'

'For a fee,' Ryan pointed out dryly.

'How is that different than going to a barber for a haircut? Or calling an electrician when your power is down?'

As she had a point, Ryan switched gears, let Adam take over once more. 'Let's go back to the loan. We have a witness stating that Melissa met with your mutual representative, Carson Creed, at five pm Wednesday. Our witness says he heard them having a heated discussion and heard Carson say to Melissa, you made a deal with them they expect you to honour it, or there will be consequences.'

'Oh dear.' Jessica pressed a delicate hand to her throat. 'Oh, dear, that doesn't sound good at all.'

'No ma'am, considering she was murdered very violently in her office less than six hours after that conversation we have to consider the possibility they are linked.' Adam let it hang for a moment as he pulled out the facsimile Tai Sung had produced of the bible page. 'This was found with the body as well. It was examined by our documents expert and the watermark indicates it came from your commune's press.'

'Our latest endeavour, a brainstorm from my lovely ladies,' Paul said, brushing his hands over Jessica and Miriam's arms simultaneously.

'There are so many people who use the Internet for bad things, making mean comments and a lot of people like to twist up religion on forum sites, so I had the idea we should run a daily spiritual with links to a religious reading. That way you can read it if you want to or just read something to feel better about the world if you're having a bad day,' Miriam explained.

'The press is our newest creation, barely three years old. We sell our bibles and spiritual readers online through our church website, sometimes as far away as Sacramento or Seattle,' Jessica added, 'but New York City is still our biggest outside market so it's likely that someone who purchased one of those bibles living in the city is your culprit.'

'What about the passage that was highlighted?'

Paul leaned forward, read the passage and nodded. 'It's one we cite here to our young betrothed couples when they do their pre-marriage counseling sessions with myself and the other ministers. A wife is meant to be cherished and protected through her husband's strength, not chided with his dominance.'

The quiet of the atmosphere was cut with the sharp ring of Adam's phone and he stepped away to take the call in hushed tones, which left Ryan to continue the interview. 'Is it possible Melissa got involved with something illegal, something she shouldn't have in terms of money or a client?'

'Anything is possible, Detective, but Melissa being involved in unethical business practices would be completely out of her character.'

This time it was Ryan who caught the glance towards Paul, the slight nod of affirmation to his wife, almost as though he were trying to silently tell her that she'd said her lines well. 'I know this might seem out of place, but I have to ask where you were between nine and ten pm on Wednesday March fourteen.'

'I was in the church office getting the Friday blog update ready with Miriam,' Jessica offered, 'and Paul was with Brother Sidoney getting ready for the youth-group activities happening this weekend.'

Ryan opened his mouth to question it further, then saw out of the corner of his eye Adam jerked his head, and the senior detective gave the Bells a polite nod. 'Excuse me.'

He stepped away, leaning close to attempt even a modicum of privacy in the echoing chamber. 'What's up, bro?'

'That was Watkins, she thinks she has a hit on who Jessica might be through Missing Persons.'

'Seriously?'

'There's more. There was a break-in at the crime scene. The guy told the arresting officers he wouldn't talk until we were there to take his statement. Says it was related to the McGyver case.'

'Shit. Alright, we'll wrap it up here and head back home.'

* * *

><p>It was almost two hours, near the end of shift by the time they got to the precinct; the moment they stepped off the elevator, they saw Watkins pacing in front of an interview room, chewing her thumbnail.<p>

'Watkins, what's going on?' Ryan asked; he knew she was steady as a boulder yet when she looked up her brown eyes were dark and serious beneath her fringe of bangs.

'Sir, the man who broke into the crime scene, it was Miss McGyver's assistant.'

'Padraig?' Now Adam looked confused. 'What's he want there?'

'I don't know, the arresting officers said he was refusing a lawyer and wouldn't speak to anyone except you two.'

'Alright. Head into Observation and we'll see what he's up to.'

Watkins nodded, headed into the second door while Adam and Ryan went into the interrogation room where they saw Padraig, his broad Irish face looking a little pale and sweaty but not the way normal criminals did. Almost like he was eager to share what he knew with the cops.

'Padraig, what's going on bro, why are you getting yourself arrested just to see us?' Ryan asked.

'It was the only way to make sure things stayed on the level. I had to be sure what I told you stayed secret.'

'Okay, dude, you're not Ian Fleming,' Adam pointed out.

'No, he was MI-6.' Padraig reached into his pocket, pulled out a soft wallet and flipped it open to reveal a very official, very familiar-looking seal. 'I'm FBI. Special Agent Bryan Patrick at your service.'


	15. Pennies Make Dollars

Both Ryan and Adam stared at the badge like the man was holding a relic from the spaceship at Roswell.

'You see now why I wanted to wait for you to arrive?' Bryan asked, the slight Irish tinge to his voice gone and replaced with native New Yorker. 'Your Officer Watkins is an efficient woman, I like that very much.'

'Beep-beep, back up here. What the fuck is the FBI doing undercover in a business like Match Made in Manhattan.'

Before Padraig - Bryan - whoever this guy was - could answer, there was a knock on the door and Karpowski opened it, followed by a stern looking woman in a power blue suit.

'Detectives, my office now, please.'

All three followed her out of the interview room and into the captain's office, getting very weird looks from the others in the bullpen, including Beckett, Geoffs and Newman. They tried to get Adam's attention but he stayed staring straight ahead until the door to Karpowski's domain closed.

'Alright, now that we are all here in the same space, I think a little context is in order,' Karpowski said, but not to Ryan and Adam - it was directed at the woman in the suit.

'Special Agent Claire McMurphy, FBI Field Office Manhattan. My agent,' she added gesturing to Bryan.

'Excellent. Now what is he doing skulking around a crime scene and telling my officers he's Melissa's office assistant?'

'Bryan,' was all Claire said and took a seat in one of Karpowski's desk chairs while Bryan remained on his feet to give the report.

'You recall several years ago we discovered that Plus-One was a front for sex-trafficking, that illegal immigrants were being sold into marriage and partnerships for a hefty fee? That other business were targeted after Plus-One was shut down?' he began, looking at Ryan and Adam as equals.

'Yeah, it's an angle we were researching for our case,' Adam replied. 'We hadn't yet eliminated the possiblity that Melissa McGyver was involved in something illegal and using her business as a cover for it.'

'You may be more right than you know, Detective.'

'Continue,' Ryan said, wary of the man's knowledge and even angrier at the feeling he'd been tricked by someone he believed to be a key witness.

'Amongst the thirteen businesses we investigated we cleared all but two.' Now Bryan moved to the whiteboard Karpowski always kept in her office for such times. He pulled two photos from a file and stuck them on the board with magnetic clips. 'Rose Garden, which turned out to be the DEA's problem and Match Made in Manhattan.'

'So we were right, they were doing something illegal,' Adam ventured.

'We knew there was something not right about the business but we didn't know what,' Bryan amended, 'so I was sent under as a clerk for Melissa to gain access to her computer files and business records.'

'It's been a time-consuming task, nearly four years of work, and now thanks to your swift and thorough investigation, I am proposing that we pool resources and figure out what she was up to.' Claire stood up once more, looked at the two detectives. 'We have access to financial data you have yet to acquire and we have the ability to supersede your normal wait-times for warrants in special cases like this.'

'While I appreciate the offer,' Karpowski jumped in, 'I can't just have you come in here, running roughshod over the hard work my detectives have already put in making the connection between the commune and the dating service business.'

'And that's not what we are doing at all. Most of the Bureau sees this as my pet project. I am reaching out to you for help, not the other way around,' Claire assured her. 'We want to figure out what her dirty deeds are, you want to find her killer. The two are linked and as I said, pooling our resources will give both of us an advantage.'

'Is there anything you left out of your statement while using your undercover alias,' Ryan asked tersely.

'No, all of that is accurate. I have a girlfriend, we've been together nearly six years and she knows I've been undercover on this assignment. What I said was true, we met for dinner and a movie after I was done at the office. Had Melissa not been working late, I would have stayed late myself to copy files and make more notes on business transactions and bank deposits.'

'He was to report to me on Thursday at one-pm,' Claire added, 'but this was rerouted when I received word from him that he'd discovered Melissa's body at the office.'

'Captain?' Ryan looked to Karpowski, saw she'd already made the decision but he put it on the table anyways. 'What's the move?'

'We work together on this, FBI and NYPD with the clause that the FBI is support in the matter of the homicide and the NYPD is support in terms of the investigation into the business dealings. We work as a task-force, not a group of alpha dogs peeing on each other,' she replied in her quiet, steadfast way that told everyone in the room she was undoubtedly the boss.

'Understood, Captain,' Adam said, and Bryan nodded.

'Agreed, sir. We all want this shut down, whatever our own motives so we won't get anywhere pissing each other off.'

'Very well. Conference Room B has been booked for your use. Assemble there and get Special Agents McMurphy and Patrick up to date on your homicide investigation. Tag whatever extra uniforms or officers you need on your end, Detective Ryan and brief them in thirty.'

Claire and Bryan left first, with Ryan and Adam hanging back to speak to Karpowski. 'I know this may come as an unwelcome surprise, gentlemen but-'

'Surprise, yes. Unwelcome, no. Sir,' Adam added after a moment when he realized he'd interrupted his captain. 'Given what we learned at the commune in speaking to Paul and Jessica Bell, it was on our list to speak with you about, getting the extra help on a federal level.'

'What did you learn?'

Adam gave an update with Ryan jumping in as necessary and Karpowski nodded, tapping her fingertip to her lips. 'You are not wrong. I wish you were, but the way things are unfolding, it looks like going with your gut is the best thing to do right now. And tomorrow is Saint Patty's Day. God.' Karpowski dragged her hands over her face in fatigued frustration. 'We are running low on resources as it is.'

'We need Watkins for sure,' Ryan told her, 'and if you could spare Newman since he is Adam's partner, we should be able to go from there, tag in uniforms for the beat-work as necessary.'

'Good. Go, update and bring in Watkins and Newman. I've got the unpleasant task of updating One-PP on this new development.'

Ryan glanced over his shoulder and saw Karpowski put on her politician hat, and for a moment, was very thankful it was her in the chair and not Beckett. Beckett would have gone crazy inside a day if she'd taken on that responsibility.

He left, saw Adam talking to Newman and Watkins and pointing them towards the conference room so he went over to Beckett who was pretending very hard not to flag him down. 'Hey, how's the crowd control business?'

'Reminds me why I'm thankful every day for Mike Royce pulling me into Homicide,' she replied. 'Why are the suits here?'

'The dead matchmaker Adam and I picked up crosses paths with a federal investigation, we're now a task force.'

'And I don't get to play?' Beckett pouted. 'I suppose that's part of what it means to be Mumum around here. You guys play at being chefs and I'm cleaning up the dishes when you're stuffing yourselves with cookies.'

'If you want in-'

'Kevin, you're a good cop, you don't need me there when you've got Adam and Newman. Watkins is good too, this could be a great case for her to get some seasoning on.'

'I agree.'

'Don't let me keep you, but swing by for a cookie later. RJ made Shane some peppernoten.'

'Those are the cinnamon walnut ones?'

'Yes sir.'

'Note to self,' he laughed, fed the birds with her and headed for the conference room where he could see Adam had brought the feds up to date.

'Watkins was just about to share what she learned on Jessica Bell.'

'Right.'

As Ryan took a seat, Watkins stood by the board, put up photos of Jessica she'd found. 'Jessica Bell, also known as Jessica or Jessie Brahms, born in Brooklyn New York. She had a degree from Hudson U in economics, and she was reported missing by her roommate after she failed to return home from a weekend date with her boyfriend Paul. Three days after the report was filed, Jessica sent an email to her roommate saying she'd eloped with Paul and was going to be staying with him, she'd be by later to get her things.'

'That's it.' Ryan looked at the room. 'That's what Melissa was involved in.'


	16. AUTHOR'S NOTE REGARDING REVIEWS

So as you can tell, this story was deleted because in the original one, I overwrote in the FF-dot-net document manager what was supposed to be chapter 14. I did this THREE TIMES. I posted chapter 15 as ch 14 thinking I'd already posted chapter 14.

As my conscience (collectively named **Alex Beckett, NotJana, **and **tayababy**) pointed out this was stupid, selfish and completely ridiculous I re-posted the whole story saved from a back-up from chapters 1-13, re-wrote chapter 14 a 4th time and posted 15 in the proper place.

So while the story remains intact from the original pointing, this means **ALL REVIEWS ARE GONE**. If you have reviewed chapters 1-13, you need to repost them. I would be very thankful and grateful to you for doing so.

Cheers and Happy Writing

MBG


	17. Refresh, Reboot

'You want to catch us up here Detective?'

Ryan rose out of his chair, moved to the other side of the board from Watkins. 'We know that Melissa was under investigation for sexual trafficking but we found no overt evidence of that. She was smart, she would know that any hint of impropriety in her books would be a one-way ticket to being shut down. But what if what she's up to wouldn't ping on a regular radar?'

'Where are you going with this, Detective,' Claire asked warily.

'Just play along with me for a moment. Watkins, you said that Jessica Brahms had a degree in economics right?'

'Right.'

'And that she suddenly ran off with her boyfriend and got married, whom she met through Melissa?'

'Yes,' Watkins replied slowly, looked back through her own notes. 'She met Paul through Melissa, they were set-up for their first meeting on June eighteenth.'

'What was the date on their marriage certificate? Year included.'

'Ummm.' She shuffled papers until she found what she was looking for. 'December first, nineteen-ninety-nine. Melissa had just graduated in June and she was days away from turning twenty-two. It's why the roommate filed the missing person's report, because she said they'd been planning a graduation-slash-birthday party.'

'Adam, can you pull up for me Melissa's business records, the financial ones, for that month?'

'On it.' Bryan jumped in, looked at Adam with apology. 'I've got the FBI special federal pass.'

'Go for it.''

The agent clickety-clacked a few key-strokes and within minutes was calling up the information to the projected screen at the front of the room for all to see. 'It says here that Melissa made a wire-transfer deposit on December eighth for thirty-five hundred dollars.'

'Where did that money go?'

'One moment.' Bryan ran a few more keystrokes, had a new window of data popping up. 'That money was subsequently transferred out into a Cayman offshore account registered in the name of Charlotte McGyver.'

'Is that out of line with any of her other deposits?'

'No,' Bryan replied after a quick scan, 'but it is the only one that was transferred out.'

Ryan turned to Adam, Watkins, to Claire as the puzzle pieces shifted around in his brain. 'Melissa runs a dating service. She says she can find you a girl, but for a little extra cash she can find you a wife.'

'If she were selling people into marriage, her records would reflect that, unless...' Adam trailed off, looked at Ryan. 'That's what you think the payments from the commune were? Payoffs for product delivery?'

'And she hides the evidence off shore in the name of a trust-fund for her daughter.'

'All this time,' Watkins breathed. 'She's been selling women like...like Barbie dolls.'

'Her books were never questioned,' Claire murmured. 'Not in that kind of detail that made make us look harder at the dates. Okay. New plan. Bryan and Adam- may I cal you Adam?'

'May I call you Claire?'

'Of course.' Claire smiled maternally at him, and continued, 'Bryan and Adam, you will use the FBI resources to go through the financials records and make a tri-crossing list - names of women on the client list against the wedding registry of the City of New York against payments that were routed into that account. Officer Watkins?'

'Yes sir.' Watkins snapped to, a squared-away soldier ready for marching orders.

'Would you be amenable to working with my agent and your detective on this? It's a lot of paperwork but the devil's in the details on this one I'm afraid.'

'Sir.' She made a show of picking up a highlighter and clicking the end like she was loading a round into the chamber of her service weapon. 'I'm your man, sir.'

'And stop calling me sir,' Claire added, which made Ryan laugh lightly when Watkins replied, 'Yes sir, Special Agent McMurphy.'

'Detective Ryan, you and I are going to pay a visit to the ME's office. Who performed the autopsy?'

'Doctor Lanie Parrish-Robbins, the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner.'

'Excellent. Call her, let her know we're on the way.'

'Claire, I can assure you that Doctor Parrish-Robbins' post-mortem exam was nothing short of stellar and thorough,' Ryan informed her as they left the conference room for the elevator.

'I'm not doubting her work, Ryan, I want to look at the body myself, get a picture of what exactly she went through so we can visit the crime scene and start build a sequence of events.'

'Okay.' Ryan whipped out his cellphone, dialed Lanie; she picked up on the third ring and answered with a full mouth. 'Hey, Lanie, it's Ryan. Are you on lunch right now?'

'Yif,' she mumbled, took a drink of something a repeated a little more clearly, 'Yes, Ryan how can I help?'

'It's a long story, we'lll explain when we get there, but has Melissa McGyver's body been released yet?'

'No, not yet, she's due to go tomorrow morning to the funeral home to prepare for Saturday evening visitations. Why?'

'Good.'

'Kevin Thomas Ryan, what is going on?' she said in her best mama-needs-to-know voice.

'The case is now crossing with the feds, Lanie, and I've got Special Agent Claire McMurphy coming in.'

'Oh, I like her,' Lanie sighed in that age-old female way. 'She was working under Jordan Shaw when we were dealing with that lunatic who blew up Kate's old place.'

'Okay, we'll see you shortly.'

Ryan hung up, then looked at Claire who was trying hard not to giggle. 'You might have mentioned you two have crossed paths before.'

'And ruin my fun with the locals? Oh no. We Special Agents don't get our kicks from prisoner torture at Gitmo, you know. I remember you as well, Detective, from a distance. We were never introduced. But I'm surprised you're not with the Puerto-Rican detective. I remember him, loved to flirt with the female agents and yet he didn't lose his professional integrity.'

'He's flying back from the island with his family this afternoon.'

'Ah, a family man now, is he?'

'Yes, he married the best woman in the world. Well, second-best, I got the best one.' Ryan smiled. 'It's nice to work with the feds who aren't just about business.'

'We are about business but we're not robots. Contrary to my twin boys' opinion,' Claire added with a laugh. 'Hayden and Tate, they are a handful. You have children?'

'Yeah, a son and a daughter. Dell and Mallory. Dell is in sixth grade, he skipped a year, and Mallory is almost through grade one.'

'They remind us we do what we do.'

'Yeah, they do.' Ryan thought of tucking his little girl into bed, telling her he was close to getting the bad guys. He shuddered to think of the idea that his precious baby would use a dating service and end up practically brainwashed in a place like the commune he'd visited with Adam that afternoon. 'Not just the kids, but my wife too. Especially after seeing the commune this afternoon.'

'Fill me in.'

Ryan did so as they headed to the morgue and he was glad he'd told Lanie about their special guest, as she'd tidied up her usually messy-as-hell computer station and had moved Melissa McGyver's body onto the central autopsy table. Even Lanie had changed from her scrubs into her dress pants and blouse.

'Special Agent, good to see you again,' she greeted her with a warm handshake.

'You as well, Doctor, though the circumstances are no less troubling than before.' Claire reached over and tugged out a pair of Lanie's trademark pink sterile gloves while the doctor donned a fresh set herself. 'What can you tell me about Miss McGyver?'

'She was in good health, no excess alcohol consumption, no signs of ecreational drug use. She had no lung or liver disease, no heart, brain or kidney malfunction, and her bridge work suggested she had a severe sweet-tooth.'

'Any markings or tattoos?'

'None.'

Claire nodded, prodding the body with the expertise of a criminal investigator and the ineptness of a non-medical layman. 'Did you use a UV light to check for bruising?'

'Yes, I did.'

'What about black-lighting?'

'Like the kind used at raves,' Ryan inquired, but his question fell on deaf ears as Lanie looked at Claire with curiosity.

'No, as there was no other suspicious or unexplained trauma.'

'Let's fire it up, shall we?'

Lanie complied, finding the right tool and flipping off the lights, and they watched as she ran the wand over the naked corpse. She'd just reached the dead woman's left hip when Claire hollered, 'Stop! Right there! What is that?'

Ryan and Lanie squinted, the detective replying, 'I don't know how it got there, but that symbol is the same watermark we found on the bible page at the crime scene.'


	18. The First Three

'I'll be damned,' Lanie breathed. 'What is that?'

'It's the logo, symbol, whatever you want to call it that the Pure Spirits Christian Commune uses on their bibles,' Ryan explained, 'we found it on the bible page at the crime scene.'

'Why wouldn't this have come up under UV-light?' Lanie asked Claire, who flipped the lights back on.

'It's scientific name is some long thing I can't pronounce with a translator and subtitles, but the street name is called White-Rock, it's become popular in gang-bangers who want to keep a low profile, use moles on other gangs,' Claire explained.

'Where is it used?' Ryan asked. 'Common tattoo parlours or is it a street thing?'

'Because they're cutting edge it's not that common, making it pricey as hell. A tattoo with this kind of detail done in White-Rock is at least eight hundred dollars.'

'For a tattoo?' Lanie's eyes bugged out; suddenly her twenty-five bucks a month on her movable henna stamps didn't seem so bad. 'That's insane.'

'Still want a permanent one,' Ryan muttered to her, and Lanie shook her head firmly.

'I'd rather spend eight-hundred dollars on airfare for taking my kids to California, thank you very much. Now that I know this is here, I'll run a few more tests, see if I can determine how long it's been here.'

'Of course. Update us when you have news.'

Claire turned and disposed of her gloves before marching out of the autopsy room with Ryan on her heels. 'Like you said she is thorough, but there's always something a fresh mind brings to the table. What next?'

'I would say we talk to her assistant, but you know that story already.'

'A businesswoman like that, she'd have had someone before Bryan,' Claire reminded him. 'Who was there before him?'

'Let's find out.'

Ryan dialed Adam, heard he was on speaker phone. 'Adam, Ryan. Can you find Melissa's assistant before Bryan-slash-Padraig?'

'Yeah, one step ahead of you. Watkins found her in the news-articles research after that investiation came about six years ago. The assistant, one Joesph Bates, quit about three months after the news broke Match Made in Manhattan was going to be . Melissa had no assistant after he left until Padraig-slash-Bryan came on board. That was only a twenty-month span.'

'How long did Bates work with Melissa,' Claire asked, leaning over towards the phone.

'He was with her for nearly eight years. Before that, it was Jordan Calvin, and before that, it was Perry Ventalio.'

All men, Ryan thought, an interesting sort of power on Melissa's part. 'Thanks Watkins. Put Adam on now.'

'Right here, Detective.' Adam's voice came through loud and clear. 'What's the move?'

'We need to find those girls. Any luck so far.'

'Not yet, but it's early days.'

'Keep going Adam.'

Adam nodded out of reflex though he knew Ryan and Claire couldn't see it, and hung up, returning to the paperwork.

It took time, and by eight-thirty, three hours after end of shift, Adam had to pause while he looked at the white-boar, to the faces of the women they'd already found. In addition to Watkins' initial search on Jessica Brahms-Bell, they'd already found three more girls: Tamira Westenra, a dental hygenist in September ninety-nine, Nicolette Dane a public relations specialist in October ninety-nine, and Janice McPherson a botanist by training-florist by trade in January double-aught. Though they came from desperately different backgrounds - Tamira was a first-generation American, Nicolette had married into money and divorced it, and Janice had been born silver spoon at the ready - all were college educated and had worked successfully in their fields before their marriages, all after meeting men through. Their current addresses were all listed as the Pure Spirits Christian Commune in Dorwich, New York.

He sighed, catchign the attention of Bryan beside him, and he nodded in sympathy. 'I get it, bro. These kinds of cases, it makes you wonder how the hell women in this day and age can fall for it, doesn't it?'

'What scares me is that this could be just the tip of the iceberg, that these women - intelligent, strong, educated women - could be somehow voodoo'd or hypnotized into believing they were happiest working in the middle of nowhere on a commune and serving the church in the heart of their community is their biggest thrill.'

'You're not one on organized religion, are you?' Bryan noted. 'It's cool, I'm not really much for church either.'

'I don't have issues with religion, per se, when it's just you trying to live your life and be happy about your choices,' he replied, thinking of Lili George-Esposito. 'I have a problem when people maniuplate it into something it's not supposed to be.'

'And that's what?'

'A weapon.'

Bryan nodded. 'Someone close to you grew up in a strict believers-only household I take it?'

'My fiance, the trauma doctor. She incurred her father's wrath for going to university to study medicine. He's a cruel man who thinks everything he does is in the name of the Lord.' Adam stood up, shook his head as he looked at the picture of Jessica Brahms-Bell. 'The way she was so subservient to him, to Paul her husband, today at the commune...'

'Hit a little too close to home, did it?'

'Yeah it did.'

Bryan glanced at his watch, saw they'd been at for nearly five hours straight. 'I don't think you'll get in trouble if you go home now. Besides, we need to call it a day soon ourselves. FBI loves to get the job done, but they hate shelling out for overtime. Watkins?'

'Huh?' Watkins looked up from her coffee cup, eyes bleary with strain. 'What?'

'Go home, girl. Call it a night. Go get drunk with your boyfriend, have some drinks or soul-cleansing sex, get some junk food and scarf down on a carraige ride through Central Park,' Bryan laughed.

'It's girlfriend and her name is also Nicolette, and she's French so junk food to her is potato chips and brie fondue.'

'That is awesome and disgusting all at once. Have a good night.'

'You too. '

'You too,' Bryan echoed, directing it to Adam. 'Go call your pretty fiancee, tell her you're in the mood for fruit salad and she can be the bowl.'

Adam laughed, and wasn't surprised when he got the voicemail at home while he packed up his things. 'Hey baby it's me, this is me hollering. Love you, see you soon.'

* * *

><p>Lindsay moaned lightly in her sleep; she was having the best dream - she was sitting on a lifeguard stand as a VIP guest to the European beach volleyball championships in southern France. Despite being, in her dream, fourth months pregnant she was still in a two-piece red bikini with her bump protected by a sheer red shawl. All the girls were rubbing her feet for good luck and all the men were giving her bump little smooches.<p>

Then suddenly, her throne was without a back and she was rolltumbling, tumbling in her sleep and jolting herself awake, eyes flying open to see Adam poised above her; he was wearing just his t-shirt and boxers. 'Oh, heyyou,' she slurred. 'What time is it, when did you get here?'

'It's just after nine, and I came in the door, locked it, put my stuff down and came in here to change and crawl in with you. Long day?'

'Mm-hmm. Twelve whole hours with Cannell, four alone which were the M&M for my trauma guy yesterday morning.'

'How did that go?'

'Good. We came out on top, learning that he had an undiagnosed heart defect that mean despite the outward signs being positive, he'd acutally been going into heart failure since the last hour of his surgery. No suing by the family, either, which is a plus.'

Lindsay rolled to her back, watched him finish undressing so he was naked in bed beside her; she always slept naked when she was overtired, it made her feel less fussy. She went to roll back to her side so she would be his little spoon, but to her surprise, he turned her towards him and held her close like he was comforting her after a nightmare. 'Adam, what is it, baby?'

''I love you with all my heart Lindsay, and I want you to know that whatever happens with us, good or bad, we're a team.'

'Of course. I love you too.'

'Contrary to what your father thinks, wives aren't servants to their husbands, they're partners.'

'Damn right we are. Like you said, we're a team.'

'And especially after we're married and you have our baby growing inside you,' he added, thinking of Miriam Bell. 'I'm going to spoil you so rotten you'll be sick of me.'

'Not possible. But as far as babies go...' Lindsay twisted so she lay on top of him, nipped at his bottom lip. 'How about a little practice run?'

'That sounds like a great idea.'


	19. Fan Me Down

As they were already naked, Adam knew this would be about exploring the body, not just the tease of stripping away the layers. His mouth fused hotly to hers and he rolled them so he was on top, looking down at his beautiful woman, who looked back at him with nothing but pure love for his heart and pure lust for his body.

He stroked his hand over her body, starting at the outer edge of her thigh. Lindsay was no pencil, she was built like Andrea and Meredeth - lush thighs covered in tawny olive skin, generous hips that curved in all the right places, especially that little sweet one where the hip narrowed to the ribcage, then up to her equally lush and generous breasts. He'd always considered himself an ass man, but that was before Lindsay; now all he wanted to do was just lay his cheek against them and spend a century or two like that. He cupped one in his hand, rubbing his thumb over her nipple to tease it into an inviting little peak.

'Lindsay,' he murmured, 'you are so sexy and female.'

'Mmm, I feel sexy too.'

'Yeah?' Adam nipped at her bottom lip, knowing it was a sign of how much she'd grown into her own sexuality again with him.

'Oh yeah.'

'You should, because you are.'

He kissed her fully then, slipping his tongue against hers, reveling in her little moans and the way her hips moved back and forth under his body. His thumb circled her nipple, teasing it to deepen her moans; he trailed a line of kisses from her jaw down her neck, down the swell of her breast to taste and tease her.

Lindsay arched her back at his touch, groaning in satisfaction as he lower his mouth to her breast. There were times when she found it hard to believe she'd once been scared of feeling like this again, that it would bring back unwanted, haunting memories of the worst moment of her life. But Adam had been so patient, so understanding and sweetly tender with her.

Tonight, however, it wasn't his sweetness she wanted, or her that he needed. They needed hot and bright.

Tipping her hips so her legs fell open as he kissed her, Lindsay's fingers circled his wrist, guided his hand back down her body so that they found her honey-pot, already achingly wet for him as his tongue flicked over her nipple.

'You feel that, Adam,' she murmured. 'That's all you. That's how good you make me feel.'

'Mmm,' was the only response she received and Lindsay gave a throat chuckle that turned into a little gasp - he'd raised his head to look her in the eye as he moved his fingers against her slick flesh before slipping his middle finger inside her. Her body lifted off the bed as her hips rocked back, then forward. He was so good at this, Lindsay thought, so good at making her feel all these wonderful little delights that were only a preview to the main event.

Her arm flung out and around his neck, keeping him close so she could whisper the naughty little words in his ears. 'Adam, don't stop, don't stop,' she cried softly, 'just keep doing that to me, baby, it feels so good.'

Adam closed his eyes, felt himself harden at her encouragement, her compliments, and when he brushed his thumb against her trigger, felt her muscles clench around him as her whole body began to go tense, he moved so that he was looking her in the eye once more. He loved to watch her face as the orgasm overtook her like that, her hips pumping against his hand. God she looked beautiful, so lost in her own pleasure that she was oblivious to every nasty thought she had about herself, every nasty thing said to her.

Here, with him, she was just Lindsay loving and making love with Adam.

She cried his name once, then let out a strangled, 'ohhh!' as she came, and while she was still in the throws of afterglow, Adam quickly twisted away to find a condom, but when he went to roll it on, Lindsay grabbed his wrist.

'Let me, Adam,' she breathed, and he nodded, rolling to his back. The way she moved her body had his brushing ever so slightly against her the sweet wet cradle of her thighs and Adam felt the shift, knew he wouldn't last much longer without her. Though his eyes had slammed shut in reflex, he could tell she was keeping her eyes on his face as she rolled the condom on.

'Adam, open your eyes, my love. I doubt you want to miss this.'

He did so, and watched as Lindsay took him in her hand, and straddling him, lowered herself onto him, moaning in pleasure as she did.

'So big, baby, so very big,' she groaned, scratching her fingertips lightly down his chest as she began to move on top of him; her lush breasts swayed lightly, rhythmically before Adam covered them with his hands to massage them, flicking fingertips and thumbs over her diamond-hard nipples. Each pass he gave her made her whimper for him, and he watched in dark delight as her body bowed back, allowing him to go deeper inside her.

Sitting up, Adam pressed his face against her breasts, his hands on her hips to hold them steady so he could roll them and he would be the one setting the pace now; it was no longer the slow, sexy burn but fast, needy, as though everything depended on

Lindsay felt her legs fall open as each thrust of Adam inside her made her feel naughty in the best possible way. She loved when he was just a little dangerous like this, it thrilled her as he always thrilled her. She planted her feet on the bed and met each stroke he gave her, moaning in his ear she was so close, so close baby, until her eyes slammed shut and she saw bright flashing lights inside them as the orgasm flooded every cell of her being.

'I'm coming, Adam,' she moaned in his ear, 'I...want...I want...'

'I know what you want, Lindsay,' he moaned back, and he kept his pace the same, driving her up once more; this time as she all but screamed it for him, Adam captured her mouth with his as he emptied himself inside her.

They lay tangled together, trying to get their breath back; Lindsay managed to pull her brain together first as she stroked Adam's dark hair with her fingers. 'That's good practice,' she sighed in dreamy satisfaction.

'I'll say.'

'Watch, when we make our baby, it won't be some tender night of reassuring romance like tonight, it'll be like the hot dirty nasty sex we had the night we got engaged. Now that was some good shagging.'

Adam fought not to bring the case into bed with them but he couldn't help it. 'Do you think that would be any kind of bonus fee for Melissa McGyver? If the bride she procured would be highly fertile and she gets a baby bonus?'

'I have no idea. But you know what would be great right now?'

'Mm?'

'Strawberry ice cream.'

'I think we have some in the freezer, and those fresh strawberries from the market,' Adam told her, sitting up to dispose of the condom. He laughed as he thought of Special Agent Bryan Patrick's suggestion. 'Or...'

Lindsay propped herself on her elbows, loving how confident and comfortable she felt to be sprawled post-coital on her bed without a hint of modesty. 'Or what?'

'Or...I think we still have a can of whipped cream. You could be my fruit bowl.'

Visions of sweet cream in naughty places on her body being licked off by her fiancee had Lindsay actually fanning her face. 'My, my, you know how to woo a girl, Detective,' she told him.

'That a yes or no?'

'That's a hell yes.'

* * *

><p>While Adam hunted up strawberries, across town Ryan was lying in bed with a satisfied grin on his own face, his head resting against his palm while his free hand stroked up and down Honey-Milk's naked back.<p>

'Hey,' she said, looking out the window. 'When did it start raining?'

'I think we were a little too occupied to notice.'

'Mmm, wanna be occupied again?' she purred, and Ryan groaned.

'As much as I want that, I have to be up at four-thirty.'

'Are you on crowd-control tomorrow?'

'No,' he shook his head. 'But because we're down people and we have all that paperwork to do, we need to be in there as early as possible.'

'Be in there as early as possible? That's what she said,' Honey-Milk teased him, then let out a squeak. 'Hey! That tickles!'

'Then you'll really squeak over this.' Ryan looked at his wife, stroked his fingers downward to find her already wet and waiting for him once more. 'Man you really are horny for me tonight.'

'Oh yeah.' Honey-Milk sighed ind delight. 'I don't like seeing my man stressed, so I use my best stress-busting technique, a couple of lung-busting orgasms.'


	20. Jumpstart From the Family

The next morning, Ryan was up at four-thirty and trying to move as quietly as he could. Honey-Milk had remained a light sleeper after Mallory's birth and there'd been mornings when he'd sneezed too hard and woke her up. He turned off his watch alarm, kissed his wife's soft shoulder.

'You're up too early,' she sighed.

'I have to be in for six.'

'Okay. Get some breakfast that isn't a donut. Love you.'

'Love you too.'

Ryan skipped a shower as he'd gotten one the night before, and once dressed he headed into Mallory's room to give her a little kiss on the forehead while she sprawled on her back, open-mouthed and snuffling in her sleep.

'Daddy loves you, Marsh-Mally,' he murmured, and got a good laugh when Mallory replied clear as a bell, 'Go put on a life-jacket Daddy.'

'I'll do that.'

He gave her another kiss and was heading towards the kitchen when he stopped short, blinked. 'Dell?'

'Oh, hi Da-ahhhhhh-d,' Dell yawned, scratching his stomach under his 'Fossils Are My Friends' pyjamas. He had the fridge open and was appearing to search for something vital at four-thirty in the morning.

'Why are you up, big bro?'

'I heard you say you had to be up early to get the bad guys and Mama was giving you trouble about eating a proper breakfast since she knows that Espo-ohhh-sito isn't there with Meredeth treats. So I thought I'd set my alarm and be up to make sure you ate something.'

'Bloody hell, now my son's after me too,' Ryan cursed lightly, making Dell laugh.

'You need some eggs,' Dell decided and turned back to the fridge where he found eggs, cheese, leftover stir-fry from dinner the night before. 'Here. Omelette. That has lots of protein and they are filling.'

'Omelette it is.'

Ryan watched Dell sit down at the table, tug over a notepad he'd brought with him from his room and mumble over it, crossing things out and writing others down. 'Problem, son?' he inquired as he melted butter in the frying pan, cracked eggs into the mixing bowl.

'I could use some man to ma-aaahhhhn advice,' Dell replied, the yawn garbling his words slightly.

'Oh?'

'Yeah. I'm stuck on a gift idea for my Tessi's birthday and I don't just want to get her something because she is having a birthday, it has to be a special thing.'

'What did you get her last year?'

'Sunglasses and a fancy beach towel for her Easter trip to Puerto Rico. The only thing I can think of isn't that aweso-oooohme.'

'Dell,' Ryan told him gently as he slid whisked eggs into the skillet, 'you can go back to bed, I'm making my healthy breakfast.'

'No, I'll stay with you. It's no fun being on your own.'

As Ryan knew his son got that stubbornness directly from Honey-Milk and no amount of cajoling would change his mind, he let it go and tried to help Dell with his dilemma. 'What is your not-so awesome idea?'

'It's...It's a water-bottle.'

'A water-bottle?'

'Uh-hmmm.' Dell nodded slowly as his eyelids tried to fight gravity. 'She told me her friends tease her and call her Es-Spill-sito because she almost always gets juice or water on her shirt when she has juice boxes or those screw-top water-bottles. So I thought she'd like a nice bright green or bright blue squeezie-top bottle.'

'That is a great idea.'

'Really?'

'Oh yeah. Dell, girls like gifts that show you listen,' Ryan explained, turning back to his skillet and added shredded cheese and leftover stir-fry veggies. 'If you always go for things like jewelery, they will think

'Hmm.'

'But if you show that you are listening, you will see how happy she is and trust me, when you get to be my age you will want to know the different between true happy and fake happy.'

'Hmm.'

'And believe me, you'll mess it up from time to time, God knows it took me about four months of dating your mother to remember that her favourite pie is lemon chiffon, not Boston cream.'

'Hmm.'

As he'd received the same answer three times in a row, very out of character for Dell, Ryan turned and made a pouty-face - Dell had put his head down on the kitchen table and fallen back to sleep, still holding his pen on the pad of paper. Ryan looked at his omelette, saw it was just about finished, so he lowered the temperature on the stove and scooped Dell up in his arms.

'No, Daddy,' he mumbled, 'five more minutes.'

'You got it, tough guy.'

Ryan tucked him, watched him curl up and nestle into his bed. His brave boy, who'd learned what it meant to be strong without being mean at such a young age, was growing up on him so fast. He kissed his son's forehead, just like he had with Mallory, and returned to the kitchen to find his wife there, frowning at the frying pan.

'Jenny, sweetie, just go back to bed,' he told her and she gave his omelette a poke with a spatula. 'I've got it.'

'I thought the kitchen was on fire. Why didn't you just make toast or something?'

'Dell woke up and insisted I make myself some eggs.'

'Was he dreaming again?'

Ryan laughed. 'No, he was just taking what you said about a non-donut breakfast to heart and making sure I look after myself.'

'Our son is a trooper.' Honey-Milk went to the cupboard, took out a loaf of bread.

'What are you doing?'

'Making you toast. Dell's not the only one who loves you, you know.'

'Don't I know it.' Ryan slipped his omelette onto a plate, then wrapped his arms around his wife. 'You know what the saddest part was about those girls with Paul yesterday?'

'What?'

'They didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with it. They were so complacent, like it was just a natural way to exist that women wait on men hand and foot. Hell, Paul practically summoned them with a text message, and you just know they were in the sideroom there of the church waiting to hear from him.'

'Do you think he harms them physically?'

'No, because he doesn't have to. He has them under his power like a hypnotist.'

Honey-Milk pursed her lips as she popped the whole-wheat toast up, began to butter it and add his favourite raspberry jam. 'So what if your victim had a sudden epiphany and she wanted out of their buy-a-bride business.'

'Buy a bride, I gotta use that one,' he chuckled, then made the same pouty-face to her as he'd made to Dell when she slipped the jam-coated toast to his plate. 'Some might call that subservient.'

'I call it headache saving.'

'How so?'

'Because it's way too early to listen to a grown man with children whine about how the jam gets on his hands no matter how careful he is.'

'I don't like my fingers sticky,' he retorted.

Honey-Milk gave a little laugh, then poured him coffee, one for herself as well. 'Kevin, you are a good cop and you are going tofigure this case out. I know you will.'

'Yeah, I know, but...'

'But what?'

'The early mornings would go down nicer if we had Meredeth treats.' He playfully ducked when Honey-Milk gave him a loving swat, took a seat at the kitchen table. 'I'm just saying.'

'Eat your Dell-insistent eggs.'

'First pay up.'

'Pay up what?' When Ryan pursed his lips up like a little goldfish, she laughed. 'Alright I'll give you a moosh.'

'Jennifer, it's Saint-Patty's day and we're both Irish, and I'm a cop. You really think today of all days it's wise to go messing about with our comforting little superstitions.'

'Yes well tonight then...' Honey-Milk crawled seductively into his lap, gave his neck a tantalizing, blood-thrumming kiss. 'Maybe, if you're good, you can have a taste of my...pot of gold.'

'Mmm, saucy word play. I like it.'

'Good. Now, once more for the cheap seats, eat your Dell-insistent eggs.'

* * *

><p>When Ryan made it into the conference room at just after six, he was smiling like he'd won the lottery, which considering that his wife was promising all sorts of kiss-me-I'm-Irish sex when he got home that night, was the marital equivalent.<p>

'Good morning, all,' he greeted them, and was met with a sour look from his partner.

'Why are you so damn chipper for six am?' Adam whined.

'Excellent sex with my wife before bed last night, a father-son moment early this morning, and a good breakfast,' Ryan replied as he sat down in front of the mountains of paperwork before him. 'Pass me those markers, will you?'


	21. Saturday Morning Summit

By ten am, the Homicide bullpen was mostly empty, as was the rest of the building. Cops would be out in full-force today since it was the biggest drinking day they faced all year. That meant bar fights, pedestrians not paying attention to traffic or other pedestrians, game fights, and other sundry debacles to be handled by New York's finest.

As Ryan, Adam and Watkins were working with the feds, they were excluded from such fine festivities to focus on what had become a harrowing look at the seedy underworld Melissa McGyver was involved in.

'I never thought I'd say this,' Adam sighed he replenished his coffee with Ryan and Watkins, 'but give me an honest Saint Patty's mugging or brawl right now, please. Let me go knock some heads so my brain doesn't turn into jam over paperwork.'

'I've never done Saint Patty's patrol,' Watkins commented with a shrug as she stirred her steamed milk.

'Wait until next year, or maybe even later today if K-Pow needs you, and think back on this case, and you tell me what makes you feel more like a cop.'

'We've found another nine women, which brings to a close one calendar year of Melissa's sideline of human trafficking,' Ryan reminded them both. 'That's nine women who were stripped of their dignity as humans and treated like custom-order wife-bots.'

'But...' Watkins trailed off, shook her head as they headed back to the conference room.

'But?' Adam prompted her.

'Well, usually we are standing up for the victim of the homicide, not her victims.'

'Watkins,' Ryan told her, 'there are times when you have to stand for both.'

'But isn't that like protecting Melissa and her business of selling women?'

'No, it's not. You're right, a dating service shouldn't be Buy-A-Bride in disguise, but neither is it the right of another human being to decide she should pay for it with her life. Only God, Yaweh, Buddha, whoever you believe in, that's who has the power. That's why we are working with the FBI, to bring both guilty parties to justice.'

'Melissa is dead, how can those women have justice?'

'Ever heard that Homer Simpson line, Marge it takes two people to lie, one to lie and one to listen? This is no different. The woman who sold those women

'Calling her a woman is an insult,' Watkins sniffed. 'That bitch deserves a whole new word for what she is.'

'That's the spirit.' Adam said, turning into the conference room and studying the board.

As Ryan said they'd found nine more women that morning and that was only year one. Who knew how many more they would be looking at before the day was out. He sniffed, paused then sniffed again. 'I know that smell.'

'Oh, man, what is that?' Watkins sighed in delight. 'I think it's coming from that thermal bag over there.'

'That's Meredeth's cooler bag, which means...' Ryan turned around and grinned when he saw his partner returning from the head, freshly tanned from a week in the tropics. 'Dude! Welcome back!'

'Hey bro.' Esposito caught him in a bear hug, slapped his back.

'When did you get here?'

'Just a few minutes ago. I brought Meredeth's cooking. She made waffles.'

At the sound of 'Meredeth' and 'waffles' in the same sentence, Adam appeared like a dog hearing the dinner bell. 'Meredeth made waffles? Is there jam and fruit and cheese?'

'Man, you are worse than this guy,' Esposito laughed, slapping his shoulder. 'He's gotten so spoiled. And yeah, she sent a little fruit and cheese platter to go with waffles.'

The 'little fruit and cheese platter' turned out to be strawberries, pineapple, honey-dew and mango mixed in a light lemonade sauce, and there was three kinds of jam including Adam's favourite - lingonberry - and when the containers were put on the conference room table, Bryan and Claire looked at them with the same curiosity as children hoping they could be part of the cool kids' lunch-party.

'You guys are invited too,' Esposito laughed, handing Bryan a reusable picnic plate. 'Dig in. Can't work on an empty stomach.'

They tucked into waffles, and the feds were barely two bites in before Bryan was telling Esposito he had serious competition for his wife. By the time the waffles were done and they were nibbling fruit and cheese while they got back to work, Esposito and Bryan were fast friends bonding over the fact their women were amazing cooks as Claire called them back to attention.

'Detective, thank you for breakfast, it's delicious. Now that we've fed our bellies, we can feed our brains. So far we have a total of twelve women in the first twelve months, and in looking at the financial records it means that her business was clean but for one woman every month, whom she sold into marriage. Adam, Bryan, Watkins, what can you tell us?'

'Three of the women - Ava Sayers, Elisha Dumas, and Noreen Benjamin - were all first generation Americans, born into working class families. Sayers is an ECE, Dumas is a piano teacher, and Benjamin is a nurse,' Watkins began. 'Another four - Mila Yevtushenko, Naomi Takihara, Yvette Beaufort, and Indira Nayyar - were straight off the plane into college. They all worked in extraordinarily different professions as well. A business major, an engineer, an art teacher, a tailor, a journalist and a computer programmer.'

'Anyone else seeing a pattern here?' Esposito said asked.

'They're all college educated,' Adam said. 'Highly different fields but all educated at a post-secondary level. Some even have post-grad degrees.'

'Not just that, they're community essentials. Women who can make contributions not only to keep the commune running, but educators too, to raise the children.'

'I recognize her,' Ryan said softly, pointing to the picture of Yevtushenko. 'She was the one we saw when we drove in Adam, with the children.'

'Yeah. Athena Costas and Monika Van der Sloot, which with the other women we found before and not including Jessica Brahms-Bell, that makes an even dozen,' Adam agreed. 'Which means if Melissa was doing this for nearly twenty years, a dozen women a year means we're looking at nearly two-hundred and fifty women.'

'Are we certain they are all women,' Claire asked, knowing it was her job to be the skeptic in the room. 'Would she have sold any men?'

'It's doubtful,' Watkins replied, then blushed fiercely when all eyes focused on her. 'I just mean they seem to be all about having women to be servants to the men and the children, putting their own ambitions on the backburner. Plus a lot of the women are either legal immigrants or first-generation Americans, which means educated or not they're probably not native English speakers.'

'What does that have to do with no men being sold?'

'I mean that a woman who doesn't speak the language probably isn't familiar with the laws either so they'd be more easily threatened or coerced...and that sounds horribly racist of me, and sexist too.'

'Unfortunately, you're also right.' Claire shook her head. 'I've worked in sex crimes for nearly seven years now, and the amount of what you just described that I see makes up about seventy-five, eighty percent of the business. Those women become targets because of all the things you just said, Watkins. So I agree, we are less likely to find males sold by Melissa than women.'

'Doesn't mean it's impossible,' Esposito pointed out, then pressed a button the ringing phone that sat in the middle of the table. 'Conference room, this is Esposito.'

'Hey Javi!' Lanie's voice came through loud and clear, 'good to have you back, brother! Everyone's there?'

'Yes we are, Doctor Parrish-Robbins,' Claire replied. 'What do you have for us?'

'I did the analysis of the tattoo on Melissa McGyver, and it is roughly four months old. I also did a cross-check on any tattoo parlours doing White Rock, and there are three in Manhattan. There is Skin-Deep on West Eighty-Seventh, Blackline in Alphabet City and Painter's Parlour on East Twenty at Second Avenue.'

'Thanks Lanie,' Ryan told her. 'Did you get anythign else?'

'The lab came back with a match on the hairs found at the came back to a Carson Creed. Does that name mean anything to you?'

Esposito looked to Ryan and Adam, who looked like a pair of Wile E. Coyotes terribly proud of his latest scheme to catch the Roadrunner. 'I'm guess by the looks on Ryan and Adam's faces that means a great deal to them.'

'Lanie, you're a treasure.'

'Anything else you need, just holler.'

She clicked off and Ryan slapped Adam in the chest. 'Time to roll out. We need Carson Creed's home address. His Saint Patty's Day is going to get a little less celebratory this year.'

'What about me,' Watkins asked, 'don't you guys need backup?'

'Keep going on those records with Esposito and Bryan,' Ryan told her. 'We need to know those names so when we hammer Carson in interview, we've got as much ammo as we can to break him down.'


	22. Door Not Closed, Just Ajar

Adam was practically salivating over the idea of getting to pop that little weasel who'd been a big fat liar to their faces, and he knew he had to rein it in because there was no god outcome to it if their suspect saw just how juiced he was at the notion of putting him in the slammer.

Cool and efficient was the way to go, just like Ryan, who was just as eager as Adam to haul this little rat bastard downtown, but was instead keeping his wits about him.

'So, how do we want to play this,' he asked, and was a little surprised when he saw Ryan simply narrow his eyes.

'I'll do the talking,' was his reply.

Adam nodded, focused his energy as they pulled to a stop on East Forty-Sixth Street, avoiding people like they were playing a game of Frogger. Carson Creed lived in a modest Tudor City apartment building whose residents had taken it upon themselves to make sure everyone who walked past knew they were dealing with some hardcore Irishmen. The windows of the five-story building had all been plastered from the inside with various Saint Patrick's Day slogans, images of Celtic knots, shamrocks and other festive decorations, and the people milling about on the sidewalk in front were having some kind of block party in their finest green and gold.

They stepped out, ensuring their service weapons were easily reached in case trying to cut through the crowd became hazardous, and approached the grill, which smelled tantalizing even though they were still full of Meredeth's waffles.

'Hey, buddy.' A wide-shoulder man in a muscle-hugging Kelly-green polo shirt and dark-wash jeans tapped a hot-dog sized finger on Ryan's shoulder. 'You want meat, you gotta wait your turn. Back of the line.'

'I'm a vegetarian,' Ryan replied, holding up his badge, which had the wide shouldered man rolling his eyes in resigned annoyance.

'Yo, Dickie! Get over here! Cops came to try and roust us out!'

A spry-looking man who had to be at least sixty nimbly moved through the crowd and pulled a piece of official looking paper from his pocket. 'Top of the morning to you, Officers. We applied for a permit for our little ceili and have not violated it in any way. I'm retired Port Authority, these lads know better than to screw with me.'

'That's fantastic,' Adam jumped in also holding up his badge, 'but we're not here to bust up your party. We're looking for Carson Creed, we need to talk to him regarding a homicide.'

'Oh, dear, well, that might be a problem as Carson went on vacation last night,' Dickie told them, then felt the old instincts kick in. 'You think he's a killer?'

'He's wanted for questioning,' Ryan replied as Adam placed the call to Claire back at the precinct to get word out that their suspect had gone rabbit. 'We need to see his apartment now.'

Once Dickie had found the superintendent who thankfully hadn't started into the beer yet, they were escorted upstairs to the fourth floor where he knocked on the door. 'Carson? It's Downstairs Dickie. Open up, son, the cops want you for murder.'

There was no answer from inside so Ryan looked at the superintendent, gave his head a jerk. The man unlocked it, and Adam and Ryan went in with weapons drawn; the apartment was cleared and they began to look around. The signs of someone leaving in a hurry were all there - food left in the fridge, unopened mail on the kitchen table, clothes strewn about in the bedroom. No signs of a break-in though, Ryan noted. So what had spooked Carson? He'd been willing to talk to them on Thursday, even though he was obviously in a panic and trying to play down his connection. Why run, then? If he really was innocent, why would he have gotten the hell out of Dodge?

Pulling on latex gloves to look for signs of a break-in, see if a possible accomplice or burglar was looking for drugs, he found a copy of a Pure Spirits Christian Commune bible in the nightstand.

'Hey,' Adam came to the door of the bedroom. 'Claire called back. Border agents picked him up at Vermont trying to cross into Canada. He's being flown back as we speak.'

'That was quick.'

'Good timing and some luck on our part. He was on a Greyhound bus, and was detained at the border-crossing.'

Ryan nodded, then gestured for him to come in. 'What you see there?'

'Evidence Carson wasn't just a representative for the commune, he was possibly an agent or honey-trapper too,' Adam replied as he looked over Ryan's shoulder into the

'Okay.' Ryan rose, turned and looked at Dickie and the super. 'Sorry gentlemen, but looks like party-time might be over. We need our officers and CSU to come down here and look through Mister Creed's effects to see what else links him to the murder we're investigating.'

Amazingly, Dickie wasn't angry or outraged; he just shook his head and sighed. 'I'll make it up to them somehow.'

'Sir, you don't seem very surprised by this.'

'Well Carson was always hanging out with those religious hippie-weirdos, so I figured he just got a hair in his brain that he wasn't cut out for city life any more and wanted to go grow strawberries with them on the farm.'

This caught both cops' attention, Adam taking a step towards Dickie. 'And who might those people be?'

'They were around on Wednesday night, maybe seven? I was coming in the door from racquetball at the Y and he was going out with them, two of them. One was a big guy, like Andrea the Giant big. The other was a smaller guy, like you Detective-' he pointed at Ryan '-and he was wearing a nice blue suit, dark hair, green eyes I think.'

Adam reached into his field bag and pulled a DMV photo of Paul Bell. 'Was this him?'

'Yes, that's him exactly. They were on their way out somewhere, I think.'

'What time was this?'

'Like I said around seven. Big guy looked like he had a real hate on for whoever it was they were going to see.'

'Did they mention a name?' Ryan asked, hoping he didn't sound too eager.

'No, just that they were in town to see a business associate and the guy offered me a card.'

Dickie patted his pockets, produced the card from his wallet; Ryan was thankful he still had his gloves on, because he saw right away the logo from the Pure Spirits commune along with Paul Bell's name listed as Chairman of the Religious Council and CEO of Pure Spirits Publishing. Interesting pair of titles, he thought.

'Sir, would you be willing to come down to the precinct to put what you just said into an official statement?'

'Of course I would, young man.' Dickie's tone was serious as he folded his arms over his narrow chest, shook his head. 'Thought I'd still kept my skills sharp, but looks like I'm getting soft.'

'Some people are masters at fooling others and you had no reason to suspect Mister Creed,' Adam reminded him as they left the apartment, locked it and put a police seal in place to ensure security. 'But now that's changed and you're doing something to help us figure out his part in the homicide we're investigating.'

'Who's dead?' Dickie asked. 'You keep saying a homicide. Or are you not allowed to mention it?'

'We're keeping the name quiet and out of the press until the body's been released to next of kin.'

'Understandable. Hope that next of kin has someone to lean on.'

'As do we all,' Adam agreed; for some reason, the words or the tone, he thought of Lindsay and decided that it wouldn't hurt to give her a little call once he was back at the precinct.

* * *

><p>With Dickie dispatched to Watkins to give his official statement into a recorder while Adam updated Claire on what they'd learned, Ryan went into the breakroom to call home. The phone nearly went to voicemail before a breathless Honey-Milk picked up.<p>

'Hey sweetie,' she giggled, 'You're lucky. Dell and Mallory and I were having a mid-morning pillow-fight, they dogpiled me and were tickling me! I was laughing so loud I almost didn't hear the phone! What's up?'

'Just needed to hear your voice, Jenn,' he replied, thinking of his children leaping onto their mother and giving her tickles to make her laugh. 'It's getting stickier. We found another thirteen women this morning.'

'Oh dear.' The glee was gone and she sobered up. 'That's so sad.'

'There's more coming but I wanted to hear you before I get started on interrogation. It's going to be a long one, so you can go ahead to Castle's tonight without me, okay? I'll meet you there.'

'Okay. I love you.'

'Love you too.'

Ryan hung up, sighed, then looked at Adam in the doorway. 'Yeah?'

'Creed's just landed at the airport. He'll be here in fifteen.'

'Outstanding.'


	23. Questions and Answers

When Carson Creed arrived in the interview box, Ryan took a few minutes to just watch him. Gone was the slightly cocky, not-so-cool man from two days before.

He looked to his right as the door to Observation opened and Lanie and Lindsay both came in. 'Hey, what are you two doing in here?'

'I came by to give you the official report on the findings from my extra battery of tests, and now that I am off for the day, my girl here and I are going shopping for the party tonight,' she replied, 'but she wanted to see her man in action. Figured there wouldn't be any harm in it.'

'We'll have to check with the feds, Claire can be stingy about rules like that.'

'Claire can be stingy about what?'

All three glanced over to see the federal agent in the doorway, looking annoyed. Clearly, Ryan thought, he wasn't the only one pissed off about not catching Carson Creed as a flight risk sooner. 'This is Doctor Lindsay Sabern, she's Detective Brennan's fiancee, and she was hoping to observe his initial interview of Carson Creed.'

'No.' Claire shook her head. 'We're on a tightrope here, you know that Detective Ryan. No civilians on this one.'

'Very well.'

'Thank you anyways,' Lindsay said politely, and she left the room with Lanie; once out of earshot, Claire shook her head.

'I'd love to let her stay you know that, Ryan-'

'I do,' Ryan agreed. 'You can't win them all, and Lindsay's a good cop's wife. She understands.'

'Good. It's natural enough to want to be proud of your spouse who's the cop and not get to see them in action.' Claire gave a wistful sigh that told Ryan she'd had her fair share of dealing with such an issue; it was gone when she jutted her chin towards Carson. 'Has he said anything?'

'No, he's just been kinda sitting there, mumbling to himself. He hasn't even cried for a lawyer yet, which is weird. Lanie mentioned the report on the extra tests she ran?'

'I skimmed it, nothing she hadn't already informed us of orally.' Claire folded her arms over her chest. 'What kind of man decides to financially represent a firm and then tries to claim that he has no knowledge of their true business dealings.'

'I've seen some cases where the crooks set up the accountant so he swings for it.'

The door to Observation opened once more and Adam poked his head in. 'Am I on?'

'You're on, bro.'

Adam nodded, and Claire gave Ryan a curious look. 'You're letting the third-grade detective take point on the interview?'

'Just watch him.'

On the other side of the glass, Adam walked in to see Carson Creed and as he expected the man relaxed when he saw what he thought was the soft little brother.

'Good afternoon Mister Creed,' he greeted him and gave the salient data for the record. Adam put down his leather-bound clipboard he used for case notes, then took a seat across from him. 'Do you understand your rights and obligations in these matters?'

'Yes, but I'm not exactly sure why I was brought in by the police.'

'Well, I can help you with that. Just need to ask a few questions.' Adam opened his clipboard to the notes he'd made, pretended to scan it though he knew it inside out. 'You're an accountant for Largo-Wynch, right?'

'Right,' Carson replied cautiously.

'You principally handle business accounts?'

'Yes, I- my background is in small-business finance.'

'And you handle the books for both Match Made in Manhattan, owned by the now-deceased Melissa McGyver and the external investments for the Pure Spirits Christian Commune?'

'Of course, that's all a matter of public record,' Carson said. 'I've worked with them for the last fifteen years.'

'Any problems with their books? Taxes not paid, overextended credit, anything like that?'

'Not a single thing.'

Adam nodded complacently, then picked up his pen. 'And can you confirm for me your whereabouts on the evening of Wednesday March fourteenth from six pm to eleven pm?'

'Sure. I'd had a drink with Melissa and then I went home, as I had some friends coming in from out of town and I wanted to get freshened up before meeting them. We were out until approximately eleven thirty when they returned to their hotel room.'

'Interesting, and what time did they arrive?'

'About eight. We went over to Dalton's on Fifth Avenue for steak and beers and the hockey game.'

Adam nodded once more, then underscored the words 'Big Fat Liar' on his pad for his own satisfaction. He froze his hand after make the underscore, then set his pen down, moved his eyes to look up at Carson without moving his head and smiling a cat-demon's slow smile. 'That sounds like a nice evening. Now tell me the truth.'

'The truth?' Carson licked dried lips with an equally dry tongue. 'I just did.'

'No, you didn't, Carson. Because we know exactly what those people did with their money and why they are linked to Melissa McGyver. On top of which, we have a credible witness who says you introduced two high-ranked members of the Pure Spirits Christian Commune as friends from out of town. So let's try this again. Tell me the truth.'

'That is the truth,' Carson insisted, 'but since I can tell you won't believe me, I'd like to contact my attorney.'

* * *

><p>While the men were waiting out Carson Creed after he cried lawyer, Lindsay and Lanie were in a boutique in Turtle Bay as Lanie tried to pick out something saucy for a very important upcoming date-night with Dave. They perused the racks of lacy underthings, with Lindsay trying to not to feel a little awkward that she was helping a friend pick out sex-wear.<p>

'You do this every year?'

'Mm-hmm.' Lanie nodded. 'We were married on December thirty-first, but since we always have our New Years Eve party at Castle's, we treat the anniversary of our first date as our time to celebrate it in true married style. Speaking of which, how are the wedding plans going?'

'Adam and I decided, we're having a beach wedding in Bermuda.'

That's so cool!'

'It's where we went on our first trip together, which was also the first time we had sex, and we decided that since that's where those two momentous occasions happened in our life together, that's where we want to have our wedding.

'So is it going to be at a posh resort or on a yacht in the Triangle?' Lanie asked, forgetting about the lingerie for a moment and focusing on Lindsay, who was trynig very hard not to show her excitement.

'Better. Andrea and Daniel said we can use their beach-house in Warwick Parish. And here's the best part.'

'What tops a beach-front wedding in Bermuda?'

'Andrea and Daniel said that they were so thankful to have all of you involved in their lives when they were thrown the curve ball of planning a wedding sooner than they thought because Andrea was pregnant, so they are paying it forward and going to cover the cost of flying everyone to the island.'

'Everyone?' Lanie wasn't quite sure she'd heard that correctly. 'You mean...everyone?'

'Yes.' Lindsay nodded. 'Adam and I are covering the costs of everything else, and Andrea and Daniel are flying all our guests to the island.'

'What about hotels?'

'The beach-house is huge, it's the same size as Castle's place in the Hamptons. Perfect for housing us all for a week to do wedding stuff.'

'So...we get to go for an island vacation and your wedding?' Lanie squeaked and when Lindsay nodded, the cool-headed and mature medical examiner squealed like a child at Christmas and bounced up and down as she hugged Lindsay. 'That's going to be so much fun! Oh, I can't wait!'

'Just no telling anyone the surprise yet, okay? We're going to be letting everyone know on Memorial Day weekend, once we get the airline confirmation.'

'My lips are sealed.'

'Now to more important things.' Lindsay turned back to the racks and racks of lingerie she was never truly comfortable with until she'd met Adam. 'What are you going to wear for your hubby on your anniversary?'

'He likes me in either purple or black,' Lanie replied, then gave Lindsay a considering look. 'Since we're here, you should pick out something for a nice night with Adam.'

'But there's no special occasion coming up soon I'd use it for.'

'That's the fun part,' Lanie pointed out to her. 'If he comes home after a hard day and sees you all sexy in something lacy, he'll forget about his troubles and you two will have a very memorable night.'

'Well...' Lindsay looked through the selections, found an electric blue number she knew would make Adam whistle like a teakettle. 'This might come in handy.'


	24. Snap Crackle Pop

It took nearly an hour and a half of waiting, which was quick by anyone's standard but Ryan was ready to chew through his own foot in impatience as the minutes ticked by: during the wait they'd learned another woman, Ginger Sheridan, had been three months pregnant when she was sold into her marriage to Val Lennox. For that alone, Ryan was ready to make some heads roll, starting with Carson Creed.

To try and keep his temper in check, he walked out to his desk, looked at the pictures of his wife and how foolish he'd felt when he'd first met her. It had been after a rather trying dinner with his sister who wanted him to find a nice girl and settle down to make some babies. Ryan had left and headed straight for a bar where he'd chatted with a cute blonde and her friend who was a dead ringer for Jessica Rabbit, complete with the smoky voice red hair and ginormous breasts. When the blonde slipped out to the ladies' room, Jessica Big-Boobs introduced herself as Andrea spelled it out her friend Jenny was seriously into him. Once he'd clued into that, he'd asked the beautiful blonde out and that was that.

How many women would they find who would never have a story like that to tell their children? Ryan wondered. How romantic was it to tell them that their daddy had bought and paid for their mama like they would a horse or a car?

His eyes drifted to the picture of Dell and Mallory dressed up from the previous Hallowe'en. Dell was dressed up as his movie hero, Doctor Alan Grant from _Jurassic Park_ - he had the chinos and dirty denim shirt, the red bandanna around his neck - and Mallory his little veggie-tyrant was a fluffy little chick with a sign around her neck that said 'I Am Not A Nugget'. Hallowe'en was a favourite holiday of Ryan's; after all he and Honey-Milk made Dell on Hallowe'en, when she'd dressed up as a sexy nurse and he was Danny Zuko. He'd been unable to resist her, and they'd banged each other senseless in Castle's upstairs bathroom. Two months later on New Year's Eve, they'd discovered Honey-Milk wasn't just run down, she was pregnant and though they'd been terrified at this unexpected news, Ryan wouldn't have traded a moment of it, all the ups and downs had been theirs and theirs alone.

How many of those women had been chosen because they would be used strictly as mothers? How many of them had become mothers through what they thought was their own free will and decision making with their husbands? How many would lose their sense of self if they learned those moments were based on something artificial?

The memory of Dell being three years old and devastated at the though he was being replaced by another baby because he was diabetic and not good enough came raging back to him, and it made a thin red haze coat his vision. As he tried to get a grip on his temper, he heard Adam behind him.

'Hey, lawyer's here.'

Ryan whirled and Adam actually took a step back, another one out of the way. 'Dude,' was all he could think to say.

'He's mine now.'

'Ryan-'

'He's mine now.' Ryan all but snarled it, and even blew past Bryan and Watkins straight to the interview room. He braced a hand on the door to try and clamp it down, get it together and he restrained himself - just barely - from throwing the door open dramatically and getting right in Carson Creed's lying face.

His face was a study of controlled rage when he stared at Carson Creed and the man who'd arrived to be his legal representative - Ryan recognized him as one of the men from the group meeting when he and Adam had gone to the commune. Not the bruiser, another one of the smaller men who'd appeared to be a member of Paul's brain-trust.

'Tucker Roth, legal counsel for Mister Creed.'

'Detective Ryan.'

'I've advised my client to speak honestly about any questions you have for him,' Roth explained, 'and that by doing so you will be able to downplay his involvement in this unfortunate situation.'

'Downplay his involvement?' Ryan hissed as he literally heard the leash of his temper snap in his brain. 'Oh, Counselor, you are sorely mistaken about that. Your client is guilt of accepting bribes and human trafficking, and is also looking at potential additional charges of conspiracy to murder.'

'Murder?' Roth looked sincerely surprised. 'What are you talking about, murder?'

'I'm talking about the fact that your client-' Ryan glared at Carson '-was seen dining with Melissa McGyver less than six hours before her murder in her office, and our evidence shows that Carson was cooking her books so that the evidence of selling women into marriage would slip past a federal investigation.'

He was building steam like the Juggernaut, and nothing was going to slow him down. 'We found out your dirty little sideline Carson, we know exactly why you went to meet Melissa that night. What was it that she didn't want to do, huh?'

'I-I-I don't kn-know,' Carson stammered, staring at the floor.

'Look at me!'

Carson looked up at Ryan with wide-eyed panicked terror. His face was beyond white, it was colourless, the lips trembling. It wasn't enough, was all the detective could think. It wasn't nearly enough. 'Does the name Ginger Sheridan mean anything to you? She married one of your so-called Pure Spirits,' he said viciously. 'She was sold to Val Lennox for six thousand five hundred dollars. I guess she was a more valuable commodity to you vultures since Val had gotten her pregnant before the wedding so that guaranteed she'd be there for life.'

'What? What?'

'What was Melissa trying to back out of? They want to start buying sex slaves? Children?' The thought made Ryan sick as his eyes burned. 'Was she selling off any babies from your breeders for the black market?'

The door to Interview burst open, Esposito Karpowski and Claire coming through like a trio of whirlwinds. 'Detective, stand down,' Esposito cautioned him but his words went unheeded; the only thing Ryan could hear was the pounding of his own blood in his ears as he pounded his fist into the table.

'You answer me, goddammit! What did she do? What do you know about?'

'Kevin.'

Karpowski used a soft tone, a motherly one, to crack through Ryan's rage. He looked over, saw her staring at him, Claire beside him just as furious. His eyes were clear enough to see it wasn't at him, or at least not entirely. The rage was directed at Carson.

Ryan looked over, saw the worry in Esposito's face. It was rare that Esposito let his worry coat his face on the job and the sight of it had him relenting. He eased back, giving Carson a searing glare before stalking out of the room and into the empty men's room, with his partner hot on his heels.

'Kevin,' he started, then pulled up short when Ryan turned around and Esposito felt his brain go blank - Ryan was crying. 'Kevin,' he repeated, trying to put a hand on his shoulder but Ryan shrugged it off.

'Don't- don't touch me, Javi,' he said in a low voice.

'We're going to get him, Kevin.'

'How?' Ryan's voice was a bitter bark. 'How? They've been doing this for twenty years! Twenty years! How many women have they sold they were nothing? What do you think they did to any women who tried to get away, who wouldn't buy into the bullshit? How many were sold to be baby machines, huh? What about those children? Were they sold like the women...like...like...'

He broke then, snapping entirely, and sinking to the floor he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes as his shoulders shook with sobs of anger. He felt his partner's strong hands on his shoulders, petting at him like he was one of their kids; he lifted his head and sighed when he saw Esposito sitting there in front of him. 'Javi, you've got work.'

'I'm needed here.'

'Javi-'

'I'm needed here. You're not the only rockheaded second-grade detective in this precinct you know. And I've got a wife and two daughters, I know how to soothe tears.'

This had Ryan chuckling a little, making his enraged weeping cease. 'Kinda glad no-one saw that one. It'll be hell enough on me when it gets around I was sobbing like a bitch.'

'I won't let that happen,' Esposito replied quietly, in a way that let Ryan know he was speaking the truth. 'And I'm glad it's sobbing like a bitch and not an aneurysm. You were turning purple in there, bro. Here.'

He passed Ryan some paper towels from the dispenser, which the Irishman took gratefully. 'Claire and K-Pow will use this to toss me from the case,' he said bitterly.

'I doubt it. You wanna know why?'

'Why?'

'Because we found a connection, a tight personal one to Claire McMurphy and this case. Come on.' Esposito slapped Ryan's knee. 'She might spill it in Interview and we don't wanna miss that, do we?'


	25. Dirty Deeds Laid Bare

'Ryan, are you settled?'

'Yes sir.'

'You can handle it, watching this interview and watching only?'

'Yes sir, I can.'

'Good.' Karpowski nodded at him as he stood beside her in Observation. 'They requested a small break after you went banana-sandwich on Creed. Claire's picking it up now with Adam. You were right, he's amazing in Interview.'

'Sir.' Ryan cleared his throat, knowing Esposito would shake his head at him. 'I apologize for losing my temper with the suspect.'

'You may have been a little more aggressive than usual, but then, we all know your hot button.' Karpowski turned to look at him. 'I remember when you took down that little punk who'd knocked Doctor Parrish-Robbins down when she was five months pregnant with her first child.'

'Still, I should have maintained myself a little better than-'

'Detective.' Karpowski turned her doe-eyes to him, gave him a look that Ryan had seen his wife give to their children. 'Let it go. You shook him up and he knows now without hesitation that he is in deep poi. You need the breather, you've been pushing at this the hardest of the entire team. Let your fellow officer represent us well to the Feds.'

'See,' Esposito murmured to him, 'you'll be fine.'

They watched through the one-way glass Claire staying out of Adam's way as Carson began to give details on what he knew about the business dealings between Match Made in Manhattan and Pure Spirits.'

_We've had a look at the books, as has already been put on record. We've uncovered evidence of human trafficking and money laundering so as was previously stated, twice, it is in your best interest to be straightforward and honest with us, starting with how you came to set up the off-shore accounts._

_My client has not made those records available to you, nor has there been any bench warrant or writ indicating confiscation of said files was necessary._

_Roth, you work for the Pure Spirits Christian Commune, correct?_

_That's right._

_So, you saying things like that makes me wonder one very simple thing - are you in on the scam too?_

At this, the Ry-Sposito monster saw Roth poker up, confer in a whisper with Carson. 'If he is part of the problem,' Esposito observed, 'that's pretty ballsy to waltz into a cop shop and be the suspect's choice of attorney.'

'If he had a choice,' Ryan pointed out.

'Or that.'

'I'm curious to know what you learned about Claire,' Karpowski commented. 'It was enough of a shock to find out the office assistant was an undercover federal agent.'

They continued to watch as Carson began to finally give them what they needed - the information on the trafficking system.

_When I came into the mix of things, they were already entrenched into a system, but basically it works that Paul has one of his citizens say that he wants a wife, so Paul would say he'd arrange it through a matchmaker. He'd go to Melissa and they would determine a suitable match for him after interviewing the man. She would find the woman and depending on the criteria she met, Melissa received a payment of anything from_

_How would they determine this criteria?_

_Paul and Jessica, they had a list they determined, like they were picking out furniture or something._

_What would bring in the highest price?_

_White or Western European immigrants, college educated, non-smokers, interested in food, the arts, history, literature, preferably between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-one, optimal for bearing children. _

'Easy, buddy,' Esposito said to Ryan when he saw the man's fist tighten so his knuckles ran white across the ridges. 'Adam will get it out of him.'

_What about children? Were they part of the trafficking market as well?_

_No, never. Paul was adamant about that, despite misgivings from the council. Only women of legal age.  
><em>

Ryan breathed a small sigh of relief when he heard it; the moment was short-lived when he heard Claire's voice, frosty as a glacier.

_How do they do it, Carson?_

_Excuse me?_

_How do they convince these women, strong women, educated women, to fall for this one-big-happy-family crap?_

_I'm not sure I know what you mean?_

Push it, Ryan thought, push him now, but Claire backed off when Adam stepped in with another more pertinent question.

_Let's go back to Wednesday evening. You found Melissa having her usual working-late dinner at the Tanzania Grill. What did you talk to her about?_

_We were talking about the new business proposal from Paul._

_Which was what?_

_Paul...he wanted younger girls for the needs of the young men. He was unimpressed that the girls in the commune wanted to get physical with their suitors before what the council considered an appropriate age._

_What's the appropriate age?_

_Eighteen._

'They are doing a damn good job trying to keep their asses covered,' Esposito started, but Ryan shushed him.

'We still have heard how Claire is connected to them.'

'Just keep listening.'

_So Paul wanted Melissa to find women younger than eighteen to bring in as-_

_Sexual companions for the boys. He thought Melissa might speak to Charlotte and she could convince some of her charges-_

_Charges?_

_She works as an after-school aupair for some wealthy families in the city. Girls like that often want to find way to break out of the rarefied world they're raised in. Paul's proposal was certainly within that scope.  
><em>

Ryan could see the sickness on Adam's face even as he continued with his questions.

_Let's stick to Wednesday evening. You left and returned to your office or went straight home?_

_Home. As I had said before, I had friends coming in from out of town and _

_Would these be them?_

_Yes, Paul Bell and Jedidiah Marks. They wanted to discuss business, if I'd been able to persuade Melissa to change her mind on the line of sexual companions._

He's talking about them like they are shoes or sports drinks or something,' Karpowski murmured. 'What kind of person does that?'

'Not a man, that's for sure,' Esposito agreed. 'Real men, they cherish their wives and don't treat them like toilet paper to be used at their convenience. Nor do they ever think they need to find a young woman to serve as a flesh-and-blood sex-droid or something.'

_What next?_

_We did go out for dinner, as I said and had arranged to meet with Melissa on Thursday morning for a face-to-face business meeting. We're not thugs, we don't go around threatening and abusing women._

Ryan snorted, and once more to his surprise, Claire did the same thing in Interview.

_You may think, Mister Creed, that because they don't get knocked around they're not being abused but the moment that money changed hands, you stripped them of everything that makes them human, that makes them women. What if one of them wanted a divorce?_

_Divorce is not permitted at Pure Spirits. _

_That's right because not only is it damaging to the spirit of the commune, it means you'd need to arrange a refund on a malfunctioning product, right?_

They watched Adam open his mouth to speak, but Claire, much like Ryan, was on a roll now. He wisely closed it and let her fume and spew.

_What happens when one of your perfect little Stepford wives doesn't think this country life is for her? Hmm?_

_They don't let that happen._

_You're damn right about that. They just _

At this, Roth turned an interesting shade of puce. _'Now wait just one moment, Miss-'_

_'It's Special Agent Claire McMurphy, maiden name Callahan. My sister was Iris Callahan-Bell, wife of Paul Bell. She met Paul through Match Made in Manhattan and interestingly enough two months after they were married, she told me she was leaving him. I never heard from her again. What do you think that means?_

Ryan's head whipped around to look at Esposito and Karpowski. 'That's what you found out?'

'Yep. Watkins dug deep into Jessica and Paul, and learned that she wasn't his first wife, nor the first one that he'd met through Melissa. Claire's sister was his first wife and the first one we know of who went missing. They buried the record by having the marriage annulled.'

'Which means that if one went missing, surely there had to be more.'

Esposito nodded. 'Watkins is cross checking the client list with missing persons reports. So far nothing but that could change.'

'Yeah. Let's hope it doesn't and we don't have to break Claire's heart telling her Iris was murdered too.'


	26. Time to Breathe

In the interview room, Adam went very still as he listened to Claire spew her vitriol at Carson. He wanted to run out of the room to Ryan and Esposito, consult with them on this new development, for surely it had to mean that Claire was in conflict of interest. But he stayed at the table, staring at Carson like this was nothing to phase him, though his insides were jam.

'Special Agent,' Roth began, then stopped when Carson put his hand on his bicep, leaned in to whisper something. Roth nodded, then looked at Claire. 'Special Agent, my client is requesting that all remaining questions be asked by the NYPD officer.'

'Very well.'

Claire looked at Adam, and he looked at Carson. 'You went to dinner with Paul and Jedidiah, where did you go?'

'To the Kobe House, as I said, for steaks and beers. They don't often have beer at the commune, it's treat for them in the city.'

Adam wondered what other kinds of vices might spring up in lieu of alcohol and wondered if having a look at their so-called 'crops' was also worthwhile, particularly for the DEA. 'You paid by credit card?'

'Naturally. Paul does not like to use cash, he's the sort of man who likes everything accounted for in person and by digital record.'

'And you returned to your home around eleven. Any digital record you can produce to verify that yourself?'

'I sent an email to Melissa to remind her of the meeting. Even though it was late, I figured she would still be working. It will be time-stamped and you'll be able to tell where it was sent from, right?'

'Our techs do that kind of thing in their sleep,' Adam replied, thinking of much more complex tasks Riley had performed for them. 'You know, I'm curious. You seem like a smart guy, you're educated, you had some world experiences under your belt when you took this job and started working on Melissa and the commune's accounts.'

'What is the question?'

'How the hell did you keep your mouth shut about something you knew to be highly illegal all these years? What do they have on you?'

'Medical bills,' Carson replied without a moments hesitation. 'My mother has multiple sclerosis and her benefits ran out long ago. In exchange for my work, her medical bills are covered via a charity the commune supports. And that's all I'm saying for now. I want to consult with my lawyer.'

'That's your right. But you'll be spending the time in a cage until arraignment on Monday morning.'

'That's fine,' Roth said, which elicited a squawk from Carson; the lawyer soothed his client as they left interview and Adam remained behind, sitting at the table while Claire paced in short, furious bursts.

'That pussy little college boy still thinks he's going to skate on this, get a juicy deal? I'll see him in hell first.'

'Why didn't you tell any of us, Claire,' Adam interrupted her, causing her to stop pacing. 'This could completely compromise everything you've worked for in the last ten years.'

'My sister-'

'Is the reason you are doing this, you're not objective.'

'Damn right I'm not, and neither are you.'

'Excuse me?' Adam squinted at her like she'd lost her mind.

'You are the one who looks down your nose and wants them to be wrong because of what your fiancee went through. How can you be objective when you see their religious leanings as a problem and not a clue?'

'I...' Adam trailed off, heaved a weighty sigh. With Carson Creed done spilling his guts, the adrenaline of a hot interrogation left him and his body forced him to see he was completely drained. He wanted to go home and crawl into the bathtub and float away his troubles, then fall asleep on his fiancee's welcoming bosom like a little boy.

For the first time in he didn't know how long, he ached for his mother.

Rather than give in at the moment, Adam began to solemnly gather his notes when the door opened and Karpowski came in, along with Ryan, Esposito, Watkins and Bryan. 'I think it's time we all call it a day today, ladies and gentlemen. This work will still be here tomorrow and we all need to take a break before we all break down,' Karpowski said, addressing each of her officers including the two federal agents.

'Sir,' Ryan started, then shut up when he saw Karpowski lift an eyebrow. 'Yes sir. If we break, the case breaks apart and that will mean all this work for nothing.'

'Exactly, Detective,' Karpowski nodded. 'All of you, go home. Have a drink for Saint Patty'.s Spend time with family or friends, a beloved pet if that's all that's at home, but take a break from this case so we can all start fresh in the morning.'

With that, the group disbanded into the bullpen and quietly went about their separate ways. Ryan went to his desk to gather his coat and scarf; Esposito did the same and sidled closer to his friend.

'You still coming to Castle's bash tonight?'

'No.' Ryan shook his head. 'Sorry, bro, but I'm not feeling it. I need to be alone.'

As Esposito understood this to mean he needed time with his wife, his kids after snapping the way he did. 'Okay. I know he'll understand. Breakfast tomorrow?'

'We have to be back here for eight-thirty.'

'I'll see if I can sweet-talk Meredeth into more goodies.'

'Given how awesome and supportive she is when we have major busts like these ones going down, I doubt that will be too much of a demand.'

Esposito laughed, slapped Ryan's shoulder. 'Go home, bang your wife, play with your kids. It always helps.'

* * *

><p>'Mama, why is TJ babysitting us tonight?'<p>

'Because Daddy and I have plans, Marsh-Mally.'

Mallory looked up from her colouring book, squinted in confusion. 'No, I mean, he is a teenage boy, right? Aren't they supposed to be wild party animals? That's what Kelley says.'

Honey-Milk laughed as she folded her scrub tops from the laundry basket. 'True but TJ is also a focused young man. He doesn't like going to parties with his school friends, he's more comfortable going out with his hockey friends and they did that last night since they have practice tomorrow.'

'Mama?' Dell called from his room. 'Do we have any green or gold ribbon?'

'I think so, why?' Honey-Milk called back.

Before Dell could answer, the door to the apartment opened and both Honey-Milk and Mallory got a shock when Ryan came in, looking like Christmas had been called off this year. Laundry forgotten, Honey-Milk raced over to her husband who was moving with the grace and fluidity of a trauma victim.

'Kevin? Kevin, honey, what's wrong? Why are you home?'

Ryan said nothing, just wrapped his arms around his wife, then kissed her deeply before letting her go and going over to Mallory and scooping her into his arms.

'I love you, both of you so much,' he murmured, turning to look at Honey-Milk. 'Where's Dell?'

'In his room. Dell! Your father's home!'

The boy's feet pounded on the floor, and Dell pulled up short when he saw his daddy was indeed home. 'Daddy, what happened, why are you home?'

'I'm done for the day,' he replied in an unsteady voice as he set Mallory down and pulled his son in tight for a hug. 'Some very big thigns happened, things we need time to process and relax away from, so we can do our jobs better tomorrow.'

'Okay Daddy.' Mallory stepped over, put her small hands on his cheeks even as he continued to hug Dell. 'You want some hot chocolate? With the minty shmellows?'

'That sounds great, sweetie.'

'We'll make it. You talk to Mama, she'll make it all better,' Dell told his father with such a wonderful sweetness that it nearly had Ryan breaking again. He took Honey-Milk by the hand and led her into their bedroom where he began to undress in jerky movements while Honey-Milk sat on the bed.

'Kevin, talk to me. What-'

'She was selling women,' he said bluntly. 'The vic, Melissa McGyver, she was selling clients, one a month, to those fuckers at the so-called Christian commune. Some of the women were pregnant. Some were sold because they could easily get pregnant.'

'Oh my god.' Honey-Milk pressed her hands to her mouth as Ryan continued to strip out of his work clothes. 'How long?'

'Twenty years. You figure that's about twelve women a year, we're looking at almost two-hundred and fifty women.'

'Jesus Christ.'

'I...I don't want to go anywhere tonight,' he told her, as he stood naked in front of her, reached for a towel to sling around his hips. 'I need a shower.'

'Bath,' Honey-Milk corrected him. 'You need to sit down and relax your mind. I'll run the tub for you.'


	27. A Lover's Touch

His woman was right, as she usually was on such matter, Ryan thought while he stirred the water with the fingertips of his left hand, his right holding the steaming mug of minty hot chocolate. Dell had been permitted to bring it in once Ryan had tugged the shower curtain across for some modesty and he was even given a kiss by his nearly eleven year-old son. The boy was such a sweetheart it made Ryan wonder if his teenage years would be straight out of the fifth circle of hell.

With the cup nearly drained, he set it aside and sank under the water, blew out the bubbles from his nose, then surfaced to see Honey-Milk sitting on the closed toilet-seat and studying him.

'I called TJ, told him to still come over. He's taking the kids out so you and I can have some time to ourselves.'

'Is that such a good idea, given the weirdos that are out on the street tonight?'

'Actually, they are walking from here to Miss Agnes' house. Jim is staying the night in Vermont since he had a late delivery there this afternoon and Miss Agnes has Nessa and Heddie for the night. They are walking the twenty-minutes they usually walk to school with a very capable teenage boy. They will be fine.'

'Thank you,' Ryan told her, gratitude dripping in every letter of the words. 'Jenny, I love you so much. I don't know what I'd do without you.'

'That makes two of us,' Honey-Milk smiled back at him. 'And you're really going to love me when I tell you I ordered us Bamboo Garden take-out, and that Esposito called while you were underwater and said he didn't want to see us at Castle's tonight after what happened today.'

'He doesn't just mean the case,' Ryan sighed. 'I...I cried.'

'You cried?' Intrigued, she moved closed. 'Like in the interview room with your suspect?'

'No. I was in the men's room with Javi, he came in to check on me.'

He sighed again, swirling water. 'After I went a little crazy on him, let my temper out, I was so pissed off with him, Jenny. This...person-' Ryan couldn't bring himself to call him a man, as in his mind, a real man didn't do the things Carson Creed had done '-he kept trying to play off what he'd done was nothing major, like it was the way things should be and he was actually insulted and scared we'd accused him of being a criminal.'

'Better you let it out than let it make your brain implode,' she said softly, and leaning forward, knelt beside the tub to kiss him. 'Making your brain implode, that's my job, one I'll do well tonight.'

'Tonight, hell, the moment TJ picks the kids up you and I are getting naked on the first available surface.'

Honey-Milk let him think that the rest of the afternoon they spent with their children; even they could sense his great sadness and disappointment and used the afternoon with their father to tell him silly jokes, make him laugh and smile. They played Battleship, one of Ryan and Mallory's favourite games which drove Dell crazy because it was so slow, and Monopoly, which Mallory loathed for the same reason.

When TJ arrived to take them the short walk to Miss Agnes' house, called them the moment they'd walked into her apartment whole and unscathed, Honey-Milk set about putting her plan in motion. Her man needed more than a masculine sob-fest, a bath and some hot chocolate. He needed her and Honey-Milk would give him that.

As Ryan had actually fallen asleep on the couch, when everything was in place she sauntered into the living room, sat on the edge of the couch by her husband's hip and stroked her hand over his face. 'Kevin,' she murmured to him.

'Mm.' He nestled against her touch cutely, which only served to make Honey-Milk smile.

'Kevin,' she repeated to him, watched his eyes flutter open. 'Hello Detective.'

'Hello sexy.' Ryan's weariness disappeared when he focused on his wife: her hair was soft and flowing over her shoulders, shoulders that were bare but for two thin straps of butter-yellow silk that widened into the bodice of a low-cut negligee; it resembled a Saturday-night clubbing dress, ending mid-thigh and Ryan could see she'd added matching thigh-high stay-up stockings topped in delicate cobweb lace. She wore no high-heels or even slippers, just remained in her flat feet so that when Ryan stood up, he could smell her hair and take in that sweet familiar yet erotic scent of her.

'Kevin, you can say you want it hot and hard to get it out tonight, but this...' Honey-Milk took his hand, linked their fingers so their wedding rings clinked together. 'This first time you need sweet.'

So saying, she led him into their bedroom where she lit the candles, giving the room a soft ethereal glow. A press of a button and the room filled again, this time with music - soft floating jazz piano undercut with an aching double-bass that sent shivers down Honey-Milk's back. She stepped over to him at the foot of the bed and one by one flipped open the buttons of his untucked oxford shirt; she shoved the loose fabric off his shoulders as she stretched to her tiptoes and kissed him. Her tongue traced the outline of his firm, sculpted lips as her fingernails lightly scratched down his chest to his pants, where she unbuttoned those too and shoved them to the floor to join his shirt.

'Kevin Thomas Ryan,' she said on a laughing sigh, 'are you wearing your shillelagh shorts?'

Ryan looked down and grinned - the boxers were shamrock green and just below the waistband were the words _To See What A Real Shillelagh Feels Like, Stick Your Hand in Here, _with an arrow pointing downward to his crotch. 'It is Saint Patty's Day and you did promise me this morning I might get to taste your pot of gold.'

'Oh, again with the bad puns,' Honey-Milk pretended to groan.

'Are they working?'

'Let's find out.'

Honey-Milk kissed him again, this time letting her hands drift to his smooth, symmetrical back. Her fingertips traced swirls and circles over his skin before flattening and settling against the small of his back to pull him close to her body. All these years together and he still made her feel like the sexiest woman in the world, confident and capable of seducing her man even when he wasn't sure what he himself needed.

Ryan breathed deeply as he felt his wife' lips move from his mouth to his jaw, down to the pulse at his neck. She was so good at this, was all he could think, so good at knowing just what it was that would make him feel better. No, not just better, feel good, feel powerful again. His hands slid up her arms, gently tugged at the straps of her negligee, making the soft sunny silk drift down her body; he reveled in her body, her smooth legs, the curves of her breasts, the nearly flat stomach, the little belly jewel glinting in the candle-light.

'That is pretty damn sexy,' he told her, tracing his index finger over the four-leaf clover decoration.

'You're not the only one who can pick out sexy little secrets, you know. Here.' Honey-Milk shimmied her hips so she was naked in front of him, then took his hands and guided them over her body to make her moan and whimper in pleasure when he brushed against her most secretive places. 'Now your turn, Kev.'

'One second.' Ryan shoved his boxers off his body and sat down on the foot of the bed. He crooked his finger at Honey-Milk and she crawled into his lap, straddling him; he could feel her already wet for him as she rocked her hips against his. 'Jenny, you're killing me.'

'Then let's try something else.'

Honey-Milk leaned forward so her motion tumbled them backwards, then quick as lightning locked her legs around his body to roll them so she was looking up into his crystalline blue eyes. With delicate movements she kissed the tips of his fingers, her tongue darting out and licking them then gently guided his hand down her body, down to the sweet wet warmth between her thighs. She closed her eyes, moaning as he began to stroke her; when his finger slipped back, slipped inside her, her breath caught in her chest as her mind began to spin wildly.

'Yes, Kevin, yes just like that, baby.'

Ryan watched her body, sensational and rhythmic as the orgasm wound up tighter and tighter inside her until he felt her stiffen and go limp her eyes glazed over. He stroked his hand down her thigh, moving so he was nestled between them and slipping inside her. Every stroke he gave her, every stroke she matched with her own meant a little more of his bad day fell away until it was just the two of them, wrapped up in each other, offering reassuring promises of unending love, sealing it with a kiss as they came together.

Still joined, still tangled on the hotly twisted bedsheets, Ryan ran his palm over the golden waterfall of Honey-Milk's hair and bumped his forehead against hers.

'You always know,' he murmured. 'Somehow you always know.'


	28. Time to Party

While Ryan and Honey-Milk enjoyed their child-free night of passion, across town at Castle's Saint Patty's Day party, Lanie and Lindsay were having some great fun of their own drinking sour-apple shooters and trying to figure out who had the better fake Irish accent, Dave or Adam. They'd already been into the green beers, and the Irish car bombs; now it was time for something fruity.

'I think I have to go with you and say your man does it better,' Lanie told her with a happy little giggle.

'You're right nobody does it better.'

'Isn't that a James Bond song?'

'I think so. Adam!' Lindsay hollered at her fiancee though he was less than five feet from her. 'Wasn'ere a Bon' song Nob'dy Does It Better?'

'Yes, my little Finnish lush, it was the theme for _The Spy Who Loved Me_, sung by Carly Simon.'

'I knew it! And I finished lunch a long time ago,' she retorted, making Adam arched an eyebrow. 'I'm not drunk, I'm tipsy.'

'Well, tipsy, I think it's time for you to take it easy on the alcohol.'

'Adam,' Lindsay pouted, 'it's a party.'

'Yeah and you know how you get when you get bad news so just humour me and switch out to Seven-Up or something, okay?'

'Fine, fine,' Lindsay siad in a sing-song voice as Adam wandered away to find Castle and Esposito; the lovely buzz that had been building in Lanie's head was quelled at the phrase 'bad news' and she gave her friend a poke in the ribs.

'Bad news? When did this happen?'

'Hey bartender! Seven-Up. It was after you went home from sex-wear shopping,' Lindsay explained. 'Adam came home with his bad day to learn that my parents called and it was decided that since I'm a filthy diseased woman they would not be attending my wedding to the love of my life.'

'They called you that?' Lanie was aghast. 'Is that because of your rape or because you and Adam are doing the nasty before marriage?'

'The first one. They told me it was my fault.'

'What!'

'Mmm-hmm. Thank you.' Lindsay took her Seven-Up, squeezed the lime-wedge into the citrus pop. 'It was my fault that I attracted the attention of a psycho smooth-talker apparently.'

'I know you've told me that story before but the booze...' Lanie tapped her temple with her finger. 'It's making things foggy. So they're not coming?'

'Nope. No mom, no dad, none of my three brothers. It's going to look very lopsided if we are in a church, with the bride and groom sides. And it will be a very lonely walk down the aisle.'

'Nuh-uh, won't happen, not with us around.' Lanie set down her drink, wrapped her arms around Lindsay. 'You weren't there for Meredeth's wedding to Javi were you?'

'Nope, I was n...not.'

'Well, Meredeth's mama died when Meredeth was just 'leven, and she never knew her daddy, never even knew who he was until he'd died, and so since Castle was the one who kinda-sorta made it happen so they met, he asked if he could give her away, one friend to 'nother.'

'That's very sweet!'

'Maybe...maybe Shane will fill in for you, since you two met through 'Lexis,' Lanie suggested, trying to look around the crowd of people for Dave; he was on call and therefore not drinking tonight. 'Dave! Yoooo-hooo! David!'

'Elenia, my treasure, if you are in the yoo-hoo zone, you're done for the night,' Dave laughed as he came over and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek. 'But since you summoned, how can I help?'

'Lin'say says that her mama and daddy told her today that none of her family is coming to the wedding so we're gonna need-a fin' someone to give her to Adam in holy matrimimony.'

'And if you're adding extra syllables, it's home time,' he concluded. 'But yes, you're right that blows if no family of hers is coming-'

'Actually it's not,' Lindsay shook her head. 'They're mean and nasty I don't want that on my wedding day.'

'-True,' Dave agreed, 'so we will find someone to fit the bill.'

'I say Shane.' Lanie's eyes were round and glassy and solemn as an owl; Dave wondered if she knew how much like Finn she looked like when she did that. 'I mean, they met through Alexis, but Shane and Alexis are Shalexis now, have been for almost three whole years, so he could give her away to his friend.'

'That's a great idea. Come on, _bella_.' Dave looped his arm around Lanie's waist. 'Let's get you home before you decide it's time to start dancing on the tables.'

'Oh, that was so much fun last year!'

'I know, you had the hangover to prove it. Come on, let's go find your coat.'

Outside in the lightly falling snow, Dave whistled for a cab and was doomed to disappointment. Behind him, under the awning of the building, Lanie was bouncing her knees and humming some unknown tune to herself. 'That's three in a row,' he groused.

'I could run into the street and flash my post-three-babies boobies at the cabbies, that might get their attention,' she suggested.

'Elenia, no. The only person I want you flashing is me.'

'Fine. Hey Dave?'

'Yeah.'

He turned around and cracked up laughing when Lanie hiked up her sweater to reveal her rainbow-printed bra. As if by magic, a taxi eased to a stop on the sidewalk in front of them. 'Works every time,' she told him with a wink.

* * *

><p>Despite Dave's misgivings, Lanie awoke on Sunday morning with a relatively clear head and only the slightest of cotton mouths. As they were still kid free until three-ish that afternoon, Lanie stretched and rolled in bed towards her husband. For a moment she just laid beside him and admired the view, reminiscing on the first time she'd woken up beside him. Their courtship had been slow at first too, taking nearly a month to become lovers which in this day and age was practically unheard of. He'd been a widower and hadn't been with a woman since he's first wife Hannah had died. Lanie had been that first for him and then that first had become the only.<p>

It made Lanie's thoughts drift back to Lindsay and Adam, as they'd been doing quite frequently the last few weeks. Lindsay and Adam had a similar story - Lindsay had been viciously attacked and had been unable to commit herself into a relationship until Adam. Adam had had his own problems with women, not the least of which had been accidentally killing his married lover's violently jealous and abusive soon-to-be-ex-husband. Yet they'd found their way out of those dark times and into the light, found each other. There was a certain poetic justice about that Lanie had to admire; you couldn't be around Dave Robbins and not admire poetry for very long.

Beside her, Dave groaned in his sleep, smacked his lips together then mumbled, 'If you're gonna watch me like a circus sideshow, the least you could do is pay the freak in coffee.'

'Sorry, sweetie, just thinking.'

'About Adam and Lindsay?' Dave peeled open his eyelids, saw her nod. 'What kind of thoughts?'

'Lindsay said that her family refuses to come to the wedding because they see her as unclean and diseased since she was raped. Adam's got no family left either.'

'He's got us.'

'Exactly. I was thinking...maybe we could step in and fill in those roles for them.'

Dave turned on his side to face Lanie, twirled a lock of her pitch black hair around his fingers. 'So we'd be mother and father of the bride and groom? That's a little...weird.'

'No,' she laughed. 'I mean, I'd be like a mother of the groom for Adam, and you'd be a father of the bride for Lindsay. They remind me a lot of us, our cautious hesitancy when we were starting out together.'

'Me too,' Dave admitted with a small warm smile. 'Lindsay's strong, like you.'

'I wasn't raped.'

'No, you weren't, but you were scared to death when you found out we were expecting Carey and you faced that with such bravery it overwhelmed me, Elenia. Lindsay has a lot of that in her too. She's not one to shy away from a fight just because she might get her knuckles bruised, you know?'

'She gets that from her mama,' Lanie trilled and Dave bopped her with a pillow, making her laugh; the laughs turned to shrieks when he dug his fingers into her ribs. 'Ahhhh! No! No! No! No! I-I-I-I-I-give I give! Stop! No more!'

Dave saw his advantage - his wife, naked and already writhing beneath him, so he lowered his lips to hers, then zipped down her body to take her breast into his mouth and suckle. 'No more of that?'

'No, _always_ more of that.'


	29. Sunday Morning Round Up

'Hello?'

'Lanie it's Ryan, did I wake you up?'

Lanie grinned at Dave, still lying on top of her with his chest puffing like a steam engine while she took the call on her cellphone. 'Nope, I was already up. What's going on?'

'Karpowski wants a full briefing of the investigative team this morning. That includes CSU and you too.'

'Okay. What time?'

'As soon as you can get here.'

Lanie glanced at the clock, saw it was just past eight-thirty. 'Okay. I'll be there.'

'Don't eat too much. Meredeth made us fajita hash.'

'Oh sweet.'

'Yeah, so get here soon before Esposito takes it all when he can get it whenever he wants.'

'I think there's a sex joke in there somewhere,' she laughed. 'See you soon.'

Lanie hung up her phone, gave Dave's ass a loving slap. 'Off you get, lover.'

'Yes doctor.'

She giggled as he rolled away and she prepared for the morning meeting; because it was Sunday and the only people in the bullpen would be weekend staff and fresh arrests she decided on a seasonal Kelly-green cashmere sweater and comfortable black pants. She gave Dave a juicy kiss goodbye and headed to the precinct, reviewing the PDF of her notes on her tablet so when she stepped off the elevator into the Twelfth Precinct's homicide bullpen she was fresh on the case.

The scent of good homemade food caught her nose first and sniffing like a hound, Lanie followed it to the conference room where she saw Esposito and Ryan handing out plates while Adam and the man she'd met as Padraig and now knew to be Ryan debated some hot point of the previous night's hockey match. 'Claire and Watkins are on their way up. Hungry?'

'Oh yeah. Wake-up sex always gives you an appetite.'

The boys groaned and Lanie just laughed as Watkins walked, neatly pressed in her uniform. 'Watkins, it's Sunday, you could have worn your soft clothes, couldn't you?'

'Nope, I'm still an unranked officer so I have to wear it as long as I'm on duty.'

'Well come on over and grab a bite to eat,' Esposito invited her with a wink.

'Gosh is it warm in here? I'm feeling flush, Detective.' She fanned her left hand in front of her face and the group collectively let out a happy cheer when they caught the wink of jewels.

'Hey! Is that what I think it is?' Ryan asked, coming over to inspect the ring.

'Mm-hmm!' Watkins bobbed her head like a bird drunk on worms. 'Brianna proposed last night!'

'Congratulations, girl!' Esposito gave her a hug, as did Lanie and Adam, and even Bryan.

'It was so sweet, we were having dinner and she gave me a single flower with the ring tied to a ribbon that said 'Marry Me?' on it. We both cried, it was so wonderful.' Watkins looked at the slim platinum band with the cushion-cut diamond flanked by two smaller sapphires and sighed romantically. 'And we agreed we're going to get our wedding bands engraved to say 'Crackers and Cheese, Best Pair Ever'.

'Crackers and Cheese?' Adam laughed.

'Yeah, her name is Brianna, right? So I call her Brie, like the cheese and she calls me Crackers.'

'That is too cute. Claire!' Lanie waved over the federal agent when she appeared at the doorway of the conference room. 'Food's hot and we're inspecting Officer Watkins' new engagement ring!'

'Congratulations, Officer.'

'Here.' Esposito, who'd made himself busy pouring a few drinks, appeared and handed everyone a plastic picnic cup. 'A little toast to Brianna and...well, shit, this is awkward.'

'What?'

'We don't know your first name, Watkins,' he told her with a guilty look.

'Oh, Evelyn. It's Evelyn.'

'To Brianna and Evelyn, for many years of happiness and health.'

They clinked cups, drank, and set to filling their plates while Claire finished setting up their meeting notes. By the time the only remains of Meredeth's fajita hash - a mix of peppers, onions, potatoes and pulled pork in a spicy guajillo sauce - were the bowl and serving spoon, the cops focused their attention to the case.

'Alright, this is what we know, ladies and gentlemen,' Claire said. 'Between nine and ten pm on March fourteen, Melissa McGyver was attacked and killed in her office. Lanie?'

'Cause of death was officially listed as manual asphyxiation.' Lanie pulled her photos from her file, clipped them with magnets to Claire's board. 'She was knocked around and she fought back a little bit but her killer choked her to death with his hands, and once she was dead, he cut out her right eye, which speaks to religious symbolism as does the tattoo on her body and the bible page with the passage found underneath her body at the crime scene.'

'Thank you, Doctor Parrish-Robbins. Detective Ryan?'

'Initial interviews have given us some pattern of her movements in the hours before her death.' Ryan picked up the briefing ball, ran with it. 'She was having dinner alone at the Tanzania Grill when her accountant, Carson Creed, met with her, giving her a warning about not reneging on a deal she'd made with person or persons unknown. Carson Creed is alibied for the murder itself but further investigation into his work on the books for Melissa's McGyver's business indicate that he was involved in trafficking women. Her dating service business acted as the lure and the dating service in turn received a hefty sum of cash when a particular match was made between one of Melissa's clients and a member of the Pure Spirits Christian commune.'

'The commune itself purports to be a self-sustaining community whose main three sources of income are the tannery, the publishing business and the produce crops, but based on the records we've found,' Adam continued, 'it appears they were wanting women of specific skills to keep up appearances, like dentists and teachers and musicians and other trades. They also bought women that were meant to be specifically breeders, or sexual companions.'

'So far we have looked through nearly seven years of records and found a total of eighty-three women and two men,' Watkins concluded, 'and from listening to what you said yesterday Claire, there is a possibility that number could be greater if we include our search to look at Missing Persons as well.'

''What is interesting is that they were able to continue doing this, even after they were under suspicion of illegal activities from federal agents before,' Bryan commented, looking at the information the officers and medical examiner had put together. 'How would they be able to slip this past?'

'Well that's something we're going to look at today, Special Agent,' Claire replied. 'We need to find more victims of her dirty business and we need to try and find someone with a motive. What about the money Melissa was gaining from the dirty business? Where did all of that go?'

Adam and Bryan shuffled papers to look at the movement of funds on Melissa's business accounts. 'It says here that the money was transferred by wire into the account and then minutes later it is transferred out into an off-shore account that Carson set-up as a trust-fund in her daughter's name.'

'What about the daughter?' Claire asked, and both Ryan and Adam shook their heads.

'We talked to her, she is alibied with a study group the night of the murder, and her dorm manager confirms she never left until she was out the door on Thursday morning for early class.'

'Look at the off-shore account,' Claire told them briskly. 'There might be some movement there we missed.'

Adam nodded, making notes, as she went on, 'What about the Pure Spirits commune, where are we on shutting them down?'

'Before we answer that, Claire, we have to ask.' Esposito paused, cleared his throat. 'How are you still allowed to look into this case since you obviously have a vested interest with your sister's disappearance?'

'Because this case is not about missing persons, this is about human trafficking. My sister went missing so that is someone else's problem,' she said with a bitter edge to her voice. 'What I want is to nail this fucker to the ground so that no more women go missing. That is in my wheelhouse to solve.'

'Then we'll figure it out.'

Claire cast her eyes down for a moment; they were clear when she looked back up at them all. 'Adam, Bryan, Watkins, you're on the marriage records again, Esposito and Ryan, you take the money. I'll be talking to the captain when she's in and we'll go from there.'

'One question, Claire.' Ryan held up his hand. 'What if we find conclusive evidence that Paul murdered your sister?'

'Then I expect him to be dealt with to the full letter of the law so that he never breathes natural air again. No vigilante business for him or I'll see you all busted to Traffic in New Jersey. Am I clear?'

'Yes sir.'


	30. Coming Together

'Dude, come on. You're a murder cop for Christ's sakes!'

Esposito gave Ryan a withering stare as they stood on the sidewalk outside Mumford and Sons Funeral Home. 'This is like trying to be a surgeon and fainting at the sight of blood.

'Yeah, it's one thing to deal with it day in and day out when you can have a little distance. It makes it real, you know? They're people, sure but now this is their people mourning. That has a whole different flavour to it.'

'Alright, I'll give you that.'

'Come on.' Ryan slapped Esposito's elbow lightly. 'Let's get this done.'

They walked in and Ryan immediately wanted to choke on the stench of roses undercut with the mortician's chemicals. It was a smell he'd never gotten out of his mind from the first time he'd ever had to go to a funeral parlour for his great-grandmother's services when he was nine. He'd had nightmares afterward that the dead bodies being looked after in the basement rooms were going to hop off their slabs and come for him. What they'd do once they had him, he wasn't quite sure but he damn well knew he wasn't going to stick around to to find out.

A man in a neatly-tailored black suit with a grey-and-black striped tie came over, offered the avuncular smile of someone who knew it was his job to be subdued but warm. 'Gentlemen, you are here for the McGyver viewing?'

'In a manner of speaking.' Esposito tapped his badge which he'd strung around his neck to avoid awkward questions from friends and family of the deceased. 'I'm Detective Esposito, this is Detective Ryan. We're-'

'Of course. Charlotte mentioned your name, Detective Ryan. I'm sure she'll be very touched you came.'

He gestured them towards a lounge where Chopin was playing delicately on the sound system; people were milling around and murmuring in what Ryan thought of as 'church voices'. He spotted Charlotte standing beside the opened casket. Her posture was stiff as a board, but every so often she leaned a little against the hulking bruiser of a man who offered her tissues and a supportive one-armed hug.

'Over there,' he murmured to his partner and they approached Charlotte quietly, biding their time until the people who had spoken to her left. 'Miss McGyver?'

Charlotte looked up, her face puffy from weeping and sleepless nights, and Ryan saw a quick glimmer of recognition followed by fresh tears. 'Detective. Oh, thank you so much for coming. I don't think y..you met m..my boyfriend when I came to the m..morgue.'

'Corey Shelley,' the bruiser said, holding out his bear-paw sized hand. He was tall with a pale complexion, round face and close-cropped black hair. 'Is there any news yet?'

'Can you take a few minutes of time in private for us, Charlotte?' Ryan said gently and Charlotte nodded immediately.

'Is it okay if Corey comes with us?'

'Sure.'

Charlotte squeezed Corey's hand and they found the funeral director, told him what they needed; he gave them use of his office, far away from the viewing room so they wouldn't be accidentally disturbed or over heard.

'It...it means a lot you c...care about what happened to her,' Charlotte started as she sat down, a bottle of water in her hands to occupy them.

'The day you stop caring about the people affected, that's the day you turn in your badge,' Esposito told her politely.

'I'm sorry, you're another cop?'

'This is my partner Detective Esposito,' Ryan introduced him, adding as they shook hands, 'Detective Brennan is still working on the case, he is pursuing a different angle. We wanted to talk to you about your mother's business. She ever talk about money or the financial situation of her business with you?'

'No.' Charlotte shook her head. 'I'm studying to be a history teacher. I'm the kind of person they made Turbo Tax and idiot-proof mortgages for, I just don't have the head for figures like she does.'

'Melissa had a habit of making Charlotte feel bad about money,' Corey said, holding her hand tightly. 'She controlled all her funds.'

'She saw every nickel I spent and how I spent it. I even had to show her receipts from cash purchases, even if it was for a packet of gum.'

'She kept you on a fairly tight leash,' Ryan prompted.

'Yes. She said since she'd paid for my schooling and my living expenses I'm beholden to her and would need to get a job in order to pay her back.'

'How did she pay for your schooling?'

'I have some scholarships, but she arranged bank loans mostly.'

Esposito and Ryan traded a glance as Charlotte closed her eyes, let out a gusty sigh. 'When I said I'd get a job to help out, she said my job was to focus on school, get good grades and a good job once I graduated.'

'It caused a few problems for us early on,' Corey interjected, lifting Charlotte's hand to his lips in a tender show of care. 'Charlotte said her mother was completely against her dating because it cost too much money.'

'How did you two meet?'

'Melissa set us up,' he laughed. 'How's that for irony?'

Ryan felt the puzzle pieces shift around. 'She introduced you?'

'Yeah, she said that if her daughter insisted on dating, it be with someone she approved of so she set us up through her dating service last February. Thirteen months later, I'm still getting used to having someone so great in my life.'

'Tell me about it.' Esposito smiled. 'I've been with my wife almost twelve years and I still can't believe I got so lucky.'

'Charlotte, I don't want to keep you, I just need you to walk me through your timeline on Wednesday night,' Ryan said, subtly telling his partner he had something that needed further investigation. 'From about four o'clock to midnight.'

'Sure, I had class until five. Medieval literature. Dry as toast but I'm good at it so I suppose it's tolerable.' Charlotte frowned, squinting as she replayed her night. 'I called my mom when I was back at the dorm and let her know I was home safely. She worries about me walking on my own, it's part of the reason she likes Corey so much. He's big so when we're together no one is going to mess with me.'

'I completely understand,' Ryan replied.

'I ate dinner in the cafeteria - chicken club panini, toasted on wheat, a garden salad and then raspberry gelato for dessert - and I was in my room studying until seven. I called Mom to let her know I was going to the library on-campus to meet my study group and that I'd call her when I was home. I said I love you and see you soon. We had lunch plans the next day.'

'Char, it's okay,' Corey murmured as her tears flowed hot and bright from his girlfriend's eyes, her slim shoulder shaking.

'I was at my study group until ten o'clock. I had a soy latte with sugar free gingerbread syrup, and two oatmeal cookies when we took a break around eight-thirty. My friends invited me to pub-night like they usually do and I turned it down like I usually do, because we all know that as much as I'd like to go, my mom wouldn't approve and was expecting my call from my dorm room phone around ten-fifteen. Corey met me outside the library and walked me to the door of my building, and I called Mom at ten-eighteen.' Charlotte took a drink of her water to steady her voice. 'I called her cellphone since that's her main line of contact, and I left a voicemail. I told her I was sorry I was late calling her and I loved her, and for her to call me when she was home from work even if it was late and I'd already be in bed. I was in bed with lights out at eleven thirty.'

The way she recited it had fresh sympathy springing up in Esposito's heart; he had a feeling the way she was reciting every detail to them wasn't because they were cops or that she was in mourning, it was because she was used to giving her mother daily reports on all her activities and accounting for every waking moment of her existence. Part of Esposito wanted to make a joke about a tracking chip like he and Meredeth had the vet put in Tortuga, but it was most definitely not the right time.

'Okay. If you think of anything else, Charlotte, you have my card so don't hesitate to call,' Ryan told her softly, then rose. 'We'll leave you to attend to the visitors downstairs.'

Ryan nearly broke the sound barrier getting out of the funeral home and back to the car, not only because it was a visceral compulsion to get away from the zombies-in-hibernation downstairs but also to get some privacy to call Adam up and have him do a run on Corey Shelley.

'You think he's involved in Melissa's death?'

'I know he is, the question is how.'


	31. Devil's in the Detalis

Once back at the precinct, Ryan immediately went to the conference room to find Adam and request his magic fingers and computer skills only to find their space empty. The board from the morning meeting was still in place but the people were all gone.

'Where the hell is everyone?' he said aloud, and caught Watkins coming out of the break-room with two coffees in her hand. 'Watkins, where is everyone?'

'Here, take this so I don't mix them up.' Watkins passed over Adam's signature coffee cup, a black ceramic mug with Jules Winfield daring someone to say 'what' one more goddamn time. It suited Adam as there was no one, not even Beckett, who aced in Interview like Adam Brennan. 'We're in Karpowski's office. Damn shame you weren't here, you missed the show.'

'What show?' Esposito asked, but Watkins just shook her head as led them into Karpowski's office; the door was open and Adam and where Esposito passed Adam his coffee. 'What show?' he repeated at his fellow detective.

'Claire and Bryan, the two federal agents, they have Paul Bell in Interview over the cooking of the books for the commune and they're taking a break while they wait on word from a proposed deal from the DA's office,' Adam replied, taking his coffee from Watkins. 'She really wants to nail him for the disappearance of her sister but I think she's going to be happy that he is toast over the human trafficking.'

'Damn shame we missed that,' he agreed as Watkins gave Adam a look.

'Dude, I gotta ask, why do you insist on drinking decaf?'

'Part of my addiction counseling that never went away,' he replied. 'You know I don't drink, right?'

'Yeah, are you a recovering alcoholic or predisposed to it in your family or what?'

'Recovering. Four years, seven months and twenty-eight days strong,' Adam specified, knowing the guys had already heard this story. 'As part of my addiction counseling I went through in my initial six months of recovery, I cut out all addictive substances which didn't just mean booze but caffeine too. It's why I drink diet pop too, so I don't run the risk of that coming back to bite me in the ass.'

'So that means on...' Watkins did the math in his head. 'August twentieth, you'll be five years sober?'

'Yes sir. Lindsay's already planned a huge party BYOB party for me. Bring Your Own Boardgames,' he explained, knowing what the acronym usually meant. 'She said that was her code when she would talk to her mother about her Saturday nights in college.'

'Clever girl. Tell her to talk to Meredeth because she's been itching for an excuse to buy a slushie machine for ages,' Esposito told him. 'And you know Mere, she's got like a thousand recipes in her head, you know she'll make some tasty soft slushies too.'

'That I do know,' Adam agreed, then sat up a little straighter when Karpowski came in with Claire and their favourite assistant district attorney Ian Link, the latter of the trio looking more than a little wrung out. 'Dude, you look like you saw a good time last night?'

'Kind of. My fiancee's was in the hospital last night at three in the morning thinking she was in labour but it was a false and I'm in court three days starting Monday for opening arguments and testimony for the Hammond case.'

'I'm sure you'll be fine, and she'll pop it out on Thursday,' Ryan reassured him. Sorry to get out you out of some much needed sleep and rest today, then bro.'

'Yeah, well, let's just say I'm glad for the distraction so I'm not home annoying Artie, or so she says.'

'Artie?' Ryan and Esposito chorused.

'Artie, it's short for Artemis. Her parents were way into Greek mythology when they were having kids, apparently. She actually has a twin brother named Apollo. Anyways.' Ian neatly snatched Watkins' coffee out of her hands, took a sip. 'Thanks Watkins, I needed that.'

'Sure,' she said, trying not to make a dopey face at what a cute nervous first-time daddy he was acting like. It was still a federal investigation after all. 'So what's the word?'

'Paul is cooked and he knows it. His wife is on her way to the city too, along with the whole rest of the upper echelon of his so-called council.'

'What about the women? The mothers and the children,' Ryan asked. 'What going to happen to them?'

'We're arranging for counselors to meet them at their homes and explain to them and their spouses the brides were paid for by the commune as business assets,' Claire said with acceptance. 'The commune itself is going to be dismantled and those families are going to be hurting but there are going to be a lot of them who want revenge on Paul, which is why we need to wrap him up as wuickly as we can.'

'What deal are you offering him?'

'Concurrent life sentences on all but ten of the charges, the rest are going to be consecutive.'

'Why those ten?'

'Because ten of the charges we've found so far indicate that the woman was pregnant at the time of the marriage and that means the unborn counts as a minor according to the letter of the law. That automatically means no deal made.'

'In that respect, the federal side of the case is close to being wrapped,' Bryan informed the detectives, which had Karpowski nodding her agreement.

'This leaves us to solve our murder case here. What did you learn from talking to Melissa McGyver's daughter this morning, Detectives?'

Ryan relayed the interview to his captain, then after a beat added in what he'd been thinking about the trip over. 'Sir, I think Melissa was grooming her daughter to be sold to the commune and that her boyfriend she set her up with is connected to them somehow. He is the right size to do the kind of damage we saw done to Melissa's body, and if he has ties to Pure Spirits, then there would be the religious motivation there as well.'

'What do you suggest, Detective?'

'I think we should look into Corey Shelley's background and see if he has any ties, known or unknown to him, to them. It could very well be that he started out in the dark like Charlotte is, and he found something out he wasn't meant to discover about his life.'

'I agree. Adam, you and Detective Esposito look into that. Ryan and Watkins, you are going to finish helping Bryan and Claire on the federal side of things.'

'Agreed, Detective.'

The team dispersed with their marching orders, and Ryan and Adam holed up at his desk to give them some separation from the federal case; Adam knew Ryan needed it to avoid another snap like the day before. 'Okay, what do we need on this guy, Carey, like Lanie's boy?'

'No, Corey with an 'O'.' Ryan spelled the name for him and a few minutes later they were looking at his basic public record information. 'Okay, born in St Louis, graduated early on a football scholarship. No surprise there, he's got hands the size of my head.'

'Seriously?'

'Oh yeah. He just turned nineteen in September and he is studying kinesiology. Now that's interesting.'

'What?'

'He's adopted.'

'Really.' Adam could feel his brain clicking almost as fast as his fingers did over the keys to see if he could call up the information related to an adoption in Missouri. 'Yes he was, his adoptive parents are Byron and Theresa Shelley, nee Percy, and they took custody of him from a hospital in New York City the day he was born. Can you find his original birth certificate?'

'One minute.' A few more clicks of the keys and Adam had the information off the public record. 'He was born to Ursula Tassel September four, father unknown.'

'There, that's the name.'

Adam printed the record and Ryan waited, bouncing his knees almost like a little kid while the printer spat out the single paper. He nearly ripped it from the tray and sprinted into the conference room where he saw Bryan, Esposito and Watkins huddled around a computer.

'Ursula Tassel, is she on the list?'

Bryan took Ryan's urgency in stride and keyed the name in after the detective spelled it out for him. 'Ursula Tassel, born in Oklahoma City, went to Stanford and then Columbia Law School after witnessing the Oklahoma City bombing. She was a client of Melissa's in August of ninety-eight and there was a wedding announced, but something happened and they were married in January of ninety-nine.'

'She got pregnant out of wedlock,' Ryan sighed as the old temper flared.

'What does this have to do with the case?' Watkins asked.

'Ursula Tassel had a son, and gave him up for adoption. He was raised in Missouri and came here for school, and was set-up through Match Maid in Manhattan with Charlotte McGyver.'

'That's it,' Esposito breathed, channeling his inner Eddie Valiant. 'That's the connection.'


	32. An Angle to be Worked

With the dots connected, there was little time to waste; Corey Shelley needed to be brought in for questioning. Ryan and Adam each went to their desks, Esposito following Adam and giving him a big-bro-little-bro pep talk.

'Don't crowd him. If he thinks he's being crowded he might make a break for it.'

'Espo.' Adam gave him a wan little smile. 'Are you sure you're cool with this?'

'Adam, it's your case, bro. I'm just here as a jack of all trades to help out.'

Adam nodded as he checked his service weapon, holstered it. He felt a little awkward riding with Ryan while the more senior detective and Ryan's real partner hung back; maybe it was left over from when he was the civilian consultant on the Raglan homicide that had ultimately led to the resolution of Johanna Beckett's murder.

'Okay, but-'

'No buts, dude. You're not just a cop, you're a detective and the most brilliant interrogator I've ever seen,' Esposito told him, making Adam blink. 'What, you didn't think you're good?'

'I know I'm good, but I didn't think I was worthy of praise like that.'

'Trust me, give it a little time, once you make first-grade like Kate, maybe even captain, you are going be in high demand for training cadets in the Academy.'

'That would be good for when Lindsay and I have kids,' Adam mused aloud. 'Less worries for her about my safety. We can make plans like regular nine-to-five workers.'

'I'll tell you a secret bro,' Ryan said, slipping his arms into his coat as he came over to see Adam and Esposito. 'Lindsay will be an excellent cop's wife because she knows that if you miss something, it's not because you don't care. And when you have all six of those babies, we are going to tease you right up until we're in the hospital waiting to hear if it's a boy or a girl.'

'Six babies?' Adam laughed as they headed for the elevator, then Ryan's Crown Vic in the parking lot.

'Yeah, you know, one for each of us. Little Javier, Little Kev-, well, Little Ry- no, Little...hmm, both my names have namesakes and so does Jenny's maiden name.'

'What about the other four?'

'Oh, right, Little Alexis, Little Shane, Little Sloan and Little Jeremy.'

They zipped out of the garage as Ryan continued, 'And when you see the pride in their faces when you and Lindsay tell them that you're out getting the bad guys and Lindsay is saving lives, man there is nothing like that feeling.'

'Lanie and Dave invited us over for dinner tonight,' Adam told him. 'Said they want to talk to us about the wedding.'

'Yeah, how's that going? I eloped with Honey-Milk and we renewed our vows after ten years together so I was delayed in wedding planning.'

'We are keeping the location of the wedding a surprise until the details are finalized. Lanie knows but she is sworn to secrecy on pain of death.'

'Hey I don't judge, it's your day, man.'

'No, we just want to make sure it works out. Oh Daniel and Andrea know it too, but they're helping to plan it.'

'Fair enough.' Ryan wasn't surprised to find a little prick to his ego as the man said it. They'd been through a lot together in the short time they'd known each other and were closer than some blood families were. 'You do know that we're goign to through you one hell of a bachelor party, right?'

'After the stories I've heard from Dave and Daniel and Esposito and Shane, I don't mind saying I'm a little frightened because I won't be able to non-remember a good party since I don't drink.'

'We have ways around that, bro. Alright, time for the game face.'

They came to a stop outside Melissa McGyver's brownstone walk-up, saw people in black milling around inside. It was never easy to bring a loved one in for questioning in the death of another, and Ryan knew it was going to be devastating for Charlotte once she knew the whole truth. Adam pressed the doorbell, stepped back when it was answered by a petite Korean woman of about twenty.

'Come in, you are here for Charlotte?' she asked in polite, if stilted, English.

'Actually we need to see Corey Shelley,' Adam replied just as smoothly as he held up his badge.

'Oh, okay.' She disappeared and returned in the blink of an eye with Corey, who didn't look surprised to see them.

'Detectives, is there news?'

'We need you to come in for questioning,' Adam told him gently, and once more there was no surprise on Corey's face.

'Very well. Let me tell Charlotte you're here and I need to go with you.'

They waited, the door partially open, open enough for them to hear Charlotte's raised voice against Corey's murmuring tones. When Charlotte came to the door, her face was still red and puffy but her eyes were dry and flashing temper.

'How dare you!' she hissed at Ryan and Adam. 'We just finished burying my mother, and you have the audacity to come here and-'

'We've found evidence that bears further questioning,' Ryan interrupted her calmly. 'Corey has agreed to the questions, they shouldn't take long.'

'I'm coming with him-'

'No, Charlotte.' Corey's tone was understanding but firm as granite. 'You need to be here. I'll look after this.'

'Okay. Okay.'

She kissed him in such a way the cops looked away so they wouldn't look creepy; when they were finished, Corey jogged down the stairs and waited for Adam to open the back door of the Crown Vic.

'I'm not wrong, am I?' he asked as Ryan eased away from the curb. 'This won't take long?'

'No, I don't think so. Where did you take her for your first date?' Ryan replied, making small talk.

'Pookaloo's. It's close to our dorms and affordable if you know what to pick. Melissa suggested it as it was where she said Charlotte likes to go for special occasions.'

'That's sweet. My fiancee and I went to the Salt Devil down in the Village,' Adam put in.

'Never been.'

Adam told him about it on the way to the precinct, but once they were inside Corey knew it was all business now as the chatter stopped and he was taken to an Interview room, where they read him his rights. Despite their praise for Adam's interview skills, Ryan took point with Corey; Adam had no problem acquiescing since it was Ryan who'd had the initial interview with Corey and put together this brainstorm.

'Do you understand your rights and obligations, Corey?' Ryan asked him.

Corey nodded slowly. 'Yes, of course. I'm fully prepared to answer and questions you have.'

'You were born in New York right?'

'Yes, I was. My birth mother was from Manhattan and she gave me to my parents who raised me in Saint-Louis.'

'How old were you when you were first made aware of this fact?'

'I was never lied to, if that's what you mean. My parents were open with me that I was an adopted child from a young age and that if and when the time came and I wanted to meet my birth mother, they would support my decision to discover my roots.'

'You don't mention a birth father,' Ryan commented and he saw Corey's fist tighten on the table.

'According to my birth certificate, she didn't know him.'

'How hard have you looked into your roots, as you called them?'

Corey shrugged. 'I did a little last summer, after I met Charlotte and decided to stay in the city over the summer to be close to her.'

'What did you find?'

'I'm sorry, I don't know what this has to do with Melissa's death.'

'Let me clarify.' Ryan moved so he was standing beside Corey's chair. 'Were you aware that the woman who gave you up was a member of the Pure Spirits Christian Commune and that Melissa was selling her clients to the commune for a hefty fee?'

Adam had to admit that in other circumstances, watching Corey's face change colours so quickly would have been like a live-action Looney-Tunes short. Right now, it was just very, very telling as the young man stayed silent. 'Corey? I take it your silence means-'

'No. No that couldn't have been right, there's no way Melissa of all people could do that,' he stammered out.

'I afraid it's true,' Ryan told him gently. 'Were you aware of this?'

'No. No I wasn't. I knew she'd gone to live on some hippie colony, my parents told me that much, but sold? That's a whole new level of crazy.' Corey looked at them, his face blanching once more. 'Wait, you think she had something to do with this?'

'Not at all.' Now Ryan bent down so his face was close to the younger man's. 'I think you avenged her.'


	33. Mothers and Fathers

_Hello faithful readers! Hope you are liking the twists and turns in this one! Don't forget to go and check out **Alex Beckett's** new story **No Room for Arguments**! It is a great story, just like this one! Always let your authors know how much you dig their work in review form!_

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><p>'Avenge my... What are you talking about?'<p>

As Corey looked genuinely baffled, Ryan had to adjust his tactics a little. 'Your birth mother, were you aware of what she was involved with?'

'I- I have no idea what you're talking about,' Corey replied.

'Let's go over this then. Detective Brennan.'

Adam took out the information he'd found on Corey's birth mother. 'Her name is Ursula Tassel, she's a lawyer who studied at Columbia. She was engaged to a man named Jedidiah Marks but the engagement was called off. Do you know why?'

'No, I don't. I didn't even know the name of my father, how should I know details about...' Corey trailed off as Ryan and Adam remained quiet and he began to put things together.

It was a hard blow to see a boy realize his lineage in the best of circumstances, but to discover it while in police interrogation was devastating. He put one of his huge hands to his mouth as his shoulders shuddered. 'Wouldn't a baby have been a reason to get married sooner?'

'She eventually did get married to Jedidiah but she was forced to give you up because of where she lived.' Adam pulled out the printouts on the Pure Spirits Christian Commune. 'This group has been buying brides for twenty years, and your bio-mother was amongst the first. She also presented one of the first problems for such an enterprise because she was pregnant before she was married. She was forced out and asked to leave until you were born.'

'Is that why she gave me up,' Corey asked softly. 'So she could be part of these people's cult?'

'It looks that way, yes, because she was married three months after she gave you away.'

Corey's knuckles tightened on the table as he clenched his fist. 'And you think I murdered Melissa because of something my mother did that was so despicable?'

'Your mother was sold by Melissa to this commune,' Ryan countered back with some steel in his voice. 'You do the math.'

'You...Melissa sold my mother? She was one of the brides you said these people bought?'

'That's right, and they don't like their products previously used.'

'No. No!' Now Corey lifted out of his chair. 'This is fucking nuts! Why would I have a motive to kill Melissa if I didn't know any of this?'

'We need your whereabouts for last Wendesday from six pm to midnight, Corey to clear you of that possibility.'

Ryan waited, holding his breath as he was certain the young man would scream for his representative. Instead he watched him explode like a pipe-bomb.

'You fucking dimwitted sons of bitches, how dare you! You ignorant bastards, how the fuck am I supposed to avenge a woman I've never met by murdering my lover's mother? Goddamn you!'

'Your whereabouts on Wednesday night, Corey,' Adam said calmly, a cool counterpoint to Corey's fury.

'You wanna know? Fine, I'll tell you. I met Charlotte at her dorm after she got home from her literature class. She called her mom, like you heard her say, but she left out the part where we fucked for an hour.' Now it was the cockiness of youth that smirked at the seasoned cops. 'Her mother still thought she was a virgin but I took care of that less than a month into our relationship.'

'Anything else she left out?'

'No.' He shook his head. 'We had dinner that she described down in her dorm's cafeteria. I walked her to her study group and then headed for my own across the street in the bio-sciences building. I met her when our study groups were finished, like she said, and I walked her home and I went home since I had to be up early to hit the gym on Thursday morning.'

'What time did you get home?' Ryan asked.

'About ten thirty. My dorm is two blocks away. You can check with the desk what time I was there.'

'Oh we will, you can be sure of that.'

There was a tap on the one-way glass and Ryan excused himself; he met with Karpowski on the other side of the glass. 'I know, we have to spring him don't we?' he sighed.

'Unfortunately. I don't think you're wrong, Detective but I know that I can trust you to call the battle a draw in order to win the war in the long run,' Karpowski replied. 'He's alibied but we'll pick it through with tweezers to make sure there are no holes.'

'Yes sir.'

'Once you spring him, go home.'

'Sir?' Ryan blinked, confused. 'There's still so much to do yet, and-'

'And it's going to have to wait until tomorrow because we are off regular business hours right now. Ther eis little we can do here except waste our time getting frustrated,' she concluded for him. 'Go spend some time with your kids. I'm sure Watkins wants to see her fiancee and I know Adam's got plans with his fiancee too.'

'Okay.' He let out a long sigh; it sucked knowing his captain was right. Not that he wanted her to be wrong, it was just a matter of shitty timing. 'Okay, sir, we'll wrap him up.'

'Good man.'

Ryan returned to Interview, relayed the message with a discreet whisper to Adam who merely nodded. They looked at Corey who was still steaming but having gotten his side of things out had calmed considerably. 'Thank you for your co-operation in answering our questions, Mister Shelley. You are free to go.'

'Just like that?'

'You answered the questions we needed answered and you will hear from us if we need to follow up once we investigate your alibi.'

Corey gave them the fish eye. 'My word isn't good enough?'

'Corey, surely you know if you've seen even one episode of _Law and Order_ we need to check into things to make sure you're not lying to us.'

'Fine,' he said shortly after a beat, and continued glaring at them as Julian came in to escort him out of the building while Ryan and Adam returned to the bullpen to pack their work for the day. Karpowski had already informed Watkins, who had finished her paperwork and was pulling on her jacket.

'Why does it feel like we're playing hooky,' Adam asked.

'Because we're cops,' Ryan replied, 'but if you're smart you won't question it.'

'As I have dinner plans this evening, you are very wise.'

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><p>'You're sure this wine is alright?'<p>

Lindsay smiled at her fiance as they walked down the apartment hallway to Lanie and Dave's place. 'If it weren't, I wouldn't have asked you to get it from the liquor store. Dave and Lanie invited us for lasagne so Italian red seems like a safe bet. Here we are.'

She rang the doorbell to Lanie and Dave's place and smiled when she heard a little voice behind the door along with solid adult foot-steps; it was Lanie herself who answered with Finn holding her hand.

'Hey guys come on in!'

'Hi-hi Miss Lin'say, Hi-hi Dete'tive Adam,' Finn chirped brightly. 'We're having lasagne for dinner tonight! We jus' came home fuh-rom visitin' Nona an' Nono in Al-ba-nee. It was very fun.'

'That's a sign of a good vacation,' Adam agreed as he toed off his winter boots.

'Mama an' Daddy said you guys have some guh-rown-up things-a talk 'bout to-nigh',' the little boy continued, 'so Vi-o-let an' Carey an' me are puh-layin' quietly in Carey's room.'

With a squeeze of his mother's hand, and a hug for Lindsay and Adam Finn scampered off as the guests came into the kitchen; it smelled wonderfully of baking mozzarella and meat sauce. Dave was at the kitchen counter brushing sliced of Italian bread with garlic butter as Lanie walked up behind him.

'Hello Doctor,' he murmured. 'Our guest are here.'

'They are.'

'Marvelous.' Dave turned around, kissing Lanie's cheek on the way by, to greet Lindsay and Adam and took the wine they offered. 'This looks great, and I have some sparkling grape for you Adam for toasting later.'

'What are we toasting?'

Lanie and Dave gave each other a little gooey look before Lanie replied, 'We've been talking about this and we decided we want, if you agree to it, to fill in as parents for the wedding.'

'Parents?'

'Yeah, like to be the mother and father of the bride and groom,' she explained. 'The biggest part of this would mean that Dave would give you away at the wedding, Lindsay.'

'You'd do that?'

'Of course we would. You're family now.' Dave saw Lindsay's eyes fill and he felt a bubble of panic rise in his throat. 'Only if you're cool with it, I don't want to-'

His words were cut off when Lindsay flung her arms around him and nodded against his shoulder as she wept happy little tears. 'I'll take that as a yes.'


	34. Family Dinner

_Hey everyone! Hope you're ready for a wonderfully cute scene! As always I love seeing your love in review form but I must take a moment to address a concern of mine:_

_In my last chapter, I asked people to check out a story and in return I received a rather scathing criticism of my intelligence to promote said story. I chose to promote the story because the author, **Alex **___, _is a friend of mine through FF-dot-net who has ALWAYS supported me and given me constructive criticism. If you look at my author bio, it states quite clearly that my Crumbsverse is a place to be supportive and offer constructive criticism. If you want to say something to the tune of 'you're an idiot, you're a this and a that and another thing', please tell me privately so the issue can be resolved in a one-on-one fashion._

_If, however, your style is to read and review and offer praise or supportive hints on how to fix things you think need fixing, this is the place for you!  
><em>

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><p>Dinner was delicious though it was hard to go wrong with homemade pasta, literally - the Parrish-Robbins kids had been making noodles and ravioli with their nona while in Albany and brought home the good stuff for Sunday night dinner. Both Adam and Lindsay admired the way that Lanie and Dave managed to keep the dinner manners of three under-ten children in line while still maintaining an adult conversation, though Adam suspected it had something to do with the way they'd been peppered amongst the children. Adam was sandwiched comfortably between Carey and Violet while little Finn was in his booster seat beside Lindsay; Dave and Lanie at the ends of the table so they could easily pass dishes of salad, bread and lasagne amongst their guests.<p>

Even better than the food though, was the conversation - Carey, Violet and Finn were not only polite but very intelligent children who asked smart questions as they all munched their dinner.

'Mama said that you guys are catching some very bad guys, not just usual bad guys this week,' Carey asked, shaking a table spoon of Parmesan cheese over his serving of lasagne. 'That's gotta be scary.'

'You haffa use you' guns?' Finn added with a little bit of worry.

'No we didn't have to use our guns,' Adam laughed. 'But Carey and your mama are right, we caught some very bad guys this week.'

'Bad guys or bad girls? Not all criminals are boys,' Violet piped up beside him, ready to defend feminine equality in all its forms which Lindsay could appreciate; after all like Violet she'd grown up with just brothers too.

'Some of each it looks likes, Violet. How is your pasta?'

'No' passa, it lasagne,' Finn informed them, scooping up his dinner, then dabbing fastidiously at his lips with his napkin.

'Lasagne has pasta in it Finn,' Violet reminded her baby brother in a Little Miss Know-It-All voice.

'Nonna say it a cassa-role wit' passa.'

'That means it's a pasta dish.'

'Vi-o-let!' The little boy squirmed on his chair, then made a face at his sister across the table. 'We haffa gues'! No bein' nas'y!'

'Good idea, Finn,' Carey agreed, then looked up at Lindsay, blinked his bi-coloured eyes. 'You are lucky to be able to have dinner with us tonight. Mama and Daddy said that intern doctors like you don't have much time off.'

'Well, I'm almost a whole year into my first year and I am working well with my resident who said that tonight I'm just on call. So that means I have to go in only if there is an emergency.'

'What kind of doctor are you Lindsay?' Violet asked. 'Are you a path...path...a medical 'xaminer like Mama or do you work with little kids like Daddy and Andrea, or do you help mamas with their babies like Doctor Harvey and Doctor Bishop?'

'I am a trauma doctor, sweetie,' Lindsay explained, 'which means let's say someone comes in with a very serious injury that was caused by a car crash or maybe they had a very bad fall onto something. The first doctor they see is the trauma doctor to determine what other doctors they need to help with making that person better.'

'So like if someone was in a car crash?'

'Exactly, my supervising doctor and I, we would be looking at their injuries and determining if they need a brain surgery or a heart surgery or someone to help reset their bones.'

'Tha' sounds suh-cary,' Finn decided, setting his fork down and looking up at Adam. 'Mis'er Detective Adam, tha' sounds suh-cary.'

'It can be very scary, but Lindsay is so awesome, everyone feels better when they hear her say she is going to do the best she can to help them.'

'Just like Mama, she tells the people she helps that she will do everything she can to help the detectives to find the bad guys, right?' Carey asked.

'Exactly.'

'Carey, that's enough cheese,' Lanie told her son when she saw him reach for what had to be his tenth spoon of Parmesan.

'But-'

'Enough,' she repeated, and Carey pouted but relented.

'Okay. Can I have more bread?'

'One piece. Two if you don't want dessert.'

'Oh, no bread thank you.' But Carey still reached for the basket and handed it to Lindsay sitting beside him. 'Lindsay, would you like another piece?'

'Sure. Thank you, you're a real gentleman, Carey,' she told him and Carey's caramel cheeks went ruby-red.

'You're so nice Lindsay.'

'This give you any ideas for your wedding dinner?' Dave asked, reaching for Finn's lidded cup to refill it with milk.

'It's delicious but I don't think it's going to fit with our theme,' Adam replied politely, hoping he wasn't offending his friend and host. To his relief Dave just sipped his wine.

'Yeah, Lanie said Lindsay shared with her the secret and she is sworn by the rules of being a woman that she can't tell me so I'll trust you when you say it won't fit.'

'You gonna suh-puh-rise ev-er-ee-one?' Finn asked, scraping his bowl clean. 'When we gonna know?'

'When it's time for the Olympics weekend at RJ and Jojo's house in the Hamptons,' Lanie told him.

'That's too far 'way.'

'It'll get here sooner than you think,' Carey assured him. 'Mama, I'm finished, may I clear anyone's plate who is also done?'

'Sure, baby.'

'Me too, big buh-ro!' Finn nudged away his bowl, wiped his mouth clean. 'I'm done too, time fo' suh-wee tuh-reats?'

'As soon as everyone is done,' Violet reminded him primly.

'O-kay, I wait. Wanna hear about the weddin'.'

Lindsay giggled when Finn propped his little chin in his hands and cocked his head to look up at her. 'Are you gonna wear a puh-retty white duh-ress?'

'You betcha.'

'What it look like?'

'Ooooh, no, Finn.' Violet shook her head solemnly. 'That has to be a surprise for Adam otherwise it's bad luck.'

'You gonna have a bumpy in you' tummy too? Mama say when she an' Daddy got married, firs' thin' she say is Vi-o-let is in her tummy.'

'That doesn't always happen, Finneran,' Dave told his youngest son. 'Sometimes, but not always.'

'We gonna have lossa dancin'? I love dancin',' Finn went on with a giggling sigh. 'Tah-rini is a good dancer, so is Tessi and Nessa too.'

'I can't wait to see Sloanie and Jeremy dancing, because it is their turn for a wedding the day after Leo and Trini's birthdays,' Carey said. 'And Mama is going to have her picture taken by Sloanie again for the naked-ladies art pictures, but that's for grown-ups to see because seeing pictures of boobies are for grown-ups only, or for little babies who need breast-feeding.'

'Stop sayin' tha' word!' Finn turned red as the tomato sauce in the lasagne. 'It no' nice!'

'Boobies!' Carey crowed at the top of his voice and Violet only rolled her eyes in sympathy at Lindsay.

'Boys are so imma-shure,' she sighed. 'Boobies are just parts of the body, like their _pene rigata.'_

'Violet,' Dave said, trying hard not to crack up laughing.

'That's what Nona calls it!'

'Who wants dessert,' Lanie said cheerfully, hoping the distraction of tiramisu ice cream and fruit would paper over the body parts conversation; it somewhat did the trick as Lindsay and Adam looked at Lanie.

'Naked ladies art pictures?'

'Sloan Machado is one of the featured artist for Vanity Fair's Summer of Arts Festival. Every year in August, she does an exhibition called _Real Live Women_ of her friends posing nude with their naughty bits covered up. This will be my sixth year doing it.'

'I don't know if I'd be so confident after three babies to strip down to mascara and my engagement ring and be photographed for all to see,' Lindsay commented, giving Lanie the once-over; Lanie caught her glancing and grinned.

'I've got all my booty dimples and my...my chest,' she amended, knowing the B-word would give Finn a stroke, 'isn't in the same place after three babies, but I am proud of the body that gave me all three of them and that is something I want to share.'

'That's true. Besides there's always airbrushing, right?'

'Nope. That's the point. All of us are in no clothes with no airbrushing to show what women in the real world look like and that beautiful bodies aren't just D-cups with a size two waist.' She tilted her head, gave Lindsay the same once-over that women could give other women. 'You would be a great addition to the exhibit, I think.'

'Really?'

'Yeah, your look would fit in great with us. Ice cream?

As Lanie dished out dessert for the table, Adam leaned over and whispered to Lindsay, 'I agree, Sloan's picture would look great with you in there.'


	35. Crack in the Wall

On Monday morning, with his children safely off to school, Esposito picked Ryan for their eight-am start on the roll.

'Cookie?' he said holding up one of Meredeth's oatmeal and cranberry breakfast cookies, which Ryan snatched up like a starving man.

'This a bribe?'

'No. Well, not really.'

'What you want?' Ryan asked with a full mouth.

'Let me do the talking when we chat up Corey's study-buddies, see what they have to say about the guy. You can take the vic's daughters' friends.'

'Seriously? You, Javier Esposito, would rather chat up a bunch of muscle heads than pretty young coeds?'

'I've had way too many experiences with girls like that thinking 'wonder what he's like in the sack' while I'm trying to do my job. Considering what I went through with the Hammond case two months ago, I'd sooner not invite any fresh hell into my life.'

As Ryan didn't want his bro suffering anymore he nodded and agreed. When they bypassed the turn for the precinct garage, he looked out the window like a little kid watchign their parent miss the turn for Disneyland. 'Uh, Espo? Precinct's that-a-way.'

'We are going right to the dorm. Karpowski called me at six-thirty this morning, said Adam and Watkins were in with her already, and are doing the paper-work end right now.'

'Okay then. Which dorm first?'

'Corey's study buddies from his group on Wednesday are in the same building as him. He spent the night away from Charlotte because he's got early classes today and he didn't want to disturb her. It's where he said he'd be when he left Interview.'

Esposito drove them through almost-morning rush hour traffic making Ryan just a little envious. They'd both grown up in New York City, but Esposito just seemed to have that little extra edge of being a navigator which allowed them to get to Hudson U's Wellington House dorm with far more ease and speed.

They parked and went inside to the lobby where they found the desk manager hard at work already, showing him their badges. 'We're here to see Damien Flossier and Roland Peters.'

'Sure, just give me a moment.'

The manager picked up the phone, dialed the two young men, then showed them the way to a lounge area that would give them some privacy. Ryan looked around, saw the vending machines and foosball table, chuckled. 'This takes me back.'

'The Academy?'

'Nah, being a freshman at NYU. My dorm was nearly identical to this.'

'I wouldn't know, I went straight from high school into the NYPD.'

'Right, I forget that sometimes.'

Both cops turned around when two very pale-faced, heavy-eyed young men came into the room; one had the smooth caramel look of multiracial heritage, the other was white as a snowflake. The snowflake took the lead of talking to them since the other was fighting a monster yawn.

'Look, Officers, we don't want any trouble,' he started. 'The house party was supervised and we weren't the people drinking there, we just tried to help out a friend who'd gotten a little too wasted after a fight with his girlfriend.'

'Roland, shut up,' the other one sighed, making him Damien by Ryan's calculation.

'That's all well and good, but we're not here about anything from Saint Patty's,' he replied. 'We're here regarding Corey Shelley.'

'Oh, yeah, his future mother-in-law got whacked, didn't she?' Roland clucked his tongue. 'Damn shame about that.'

'We spoke to Corey yesterday and we wanted to follow up with you on his alibi.'

'Oh, sure, I guess.' Damien scratched his cheek, sat down on the back of a couch. 'What do you need?'

'He told us he was with Charlotte from five to seven pm last Wednesday, and that he came to your study group at the library, that right?'

'Yeah, but he took off around eight,' Roland said; both Ryan and Esposito felt the hairs on their necks stand up straight.

'Why's that?'

'I'unno, he got a text around eight when we were going to get coffee and said he had to split for a few but he'd be back before Charlotte had to meet him. It's kinda crazy the way he fusses over her. She's a big girl, she was raised in the city, right?'

'It's her mother, man, even Corey said she's a little on the whacko side when it comes to Charlotte,' Damien chipped in, then bobbed his head in a little show of guilt. 'Not to speak ill of the dead, Detectives, but let's call a spade a spade, here. The woman was so freaked out about Charlotte doing anything wrong. I knew Charlotte right from first day of O-Week, and man, you shoulda seen the shit-fit her mother pitched when she saw us talking outside the dorm one day when she came to pick Charlotte up for a lunch date.'

'Why do you think that was?'

'The way I figured it, Missus McGyver was a single mom, right? Only child's a daughter and doesn't want to see her make mistakes like she did.'

'Yeah, but Dee, there's a difference between overprotective and control freak,' Roland pointed out. 'The way she'd make Charlotte check in all the time about where she was going and what she was doing and who she was with, it was like that Julia Roberts movie, where she's got the big-ass beach house and Mister Mustache for a hubby.'

'_Sleeping With the Enemy_?' Esposito prompted and Roland snapped his fingers.

'Yeah, that one.'

'Safe to say it was a real surprise when Melissa let Charlotte date Corey?' Ryan asked, and while Roland nodded, Damien was a little more reticent. 'Damien?'

'Most people would probably think that, unless you know that Melissa set them up together. In a twisted way, it reminded me of those old-school matchmaking deals, like the girl couldn't date unless she had the approval of her family and they had everyone's approval. Corey even referred to Melissa as his future mother-in-law.'

'That's pretty quick, considering Charlotte's only nineteen,' Esposito observed, and Damien nodded in agreement.

'I thought so too, and- don't get me wrong, they work really well together, but Charlotte's mother has brainwashed her into thinking the only guy she should be banging is her hubby or future hubby, even though a lot of our counselors tell us that you can't do that in case you're not a good fit physically.'

Esposito made notes, as Ryan continued the questions. 'Did you have any idea where Corey was going when he got that text on Wednesday?'

'Nope, not a clue.'

'If you had to guess?'

'Probably to see Melissa. Aside from Charlotte the only person I know of that he'd drop everything for, including his study group, is her.'

'What time did he come back?'

'Around quarter to ten. He looked distracted but he always had that look when he'd been around Melissa, like he was trying to put whatever she'd said out of his mind and focus on what he was doing now instead.'

'And when he met Charlotte?'

'Business as usual,' Damien shrugged.

'We didn't see him the next morning, though, he was up and gone early for something or other. Corey's a morning person so he's usually out early anyways.'

'Right.' Ryan gave his partner a subtle flick of the eyebrows, and Esposito flipped his notebook shut, took out a card. 'If you think of anything else weird from that night, let us know right away. Even if you think it's something small you'll be able to help by telling us.'

'Thanks. Hope you catch the guy who did Melissa in,' Roland said and led Damien, half-asleep once more now that his brain was no longer needed.

Once back on the street, Ryan and Esposito compared notes. 'We need to check out the surveillance cameras, see if we've got Corey on tape.'

'We may have to wait a few more hours on that. When they were brought in to Riley, they were smashed to hell and back so he's been trying to piece it back together.'

'Fair enough, we'll goose him out. In the mean time, we're going to find Charlotte's study partners.' Esposito turned them over. 'Wonder if any of them have a crush on her like Damien does.'

'You caught that too?'

'Only because he's about as subtle as Dell is, declaring my daughter as 'his' girl.'

'Hey, does Tessi still wear that silly little plastic ring from last summer?' Ryan asked as Esposito they used the crosswalk to go to the opposite side of the block to Charlotte's dorm.

'Yeah, she has it on a little string she always wears it around her neck, why?'

'Dell has a plastic whistle he always wears and when I asked him about it once, he said it was a promise to his Tessi.'

Esposito laughed. 'Five bucks says they played pretend they were getting married.'

'Do I look like a sucker?'


	36. Put the Pieces Together

While Ryan and Esposito checked out the alibis, Adam was sitting with Watkins at a table going over financial and phone records of Charlotte McGyver and Corey Shelley. Having been called in at the ass-crack of dawn to make sure they'd be able to sit on a judge until they got emergency warrants for the records they needed, it was already feeling like lunchtime to him.

'Alright, team,' he sighed, 'let's recap. Watkins, what have you found?'

'This girl had zero independence,' she sighed. 'Melissa created her account as a joint account for her to essentially be spying on her daughter who is a legal adult to monitor her spending.'

'That's harsh.'

I looked at some of Melissa's email between her and her daughter, the woman would tell her she was overspending. Everything went through Melissa like the frickin' Panama Canal.'

'And if Corey had Melissa's approval because he was her choice for her daughter, he'd be of little help to get her that independence because he wouldn't want to rebel against all-powerful mama,' Adam agreed. 'It's like Lindsay's parents all over again.'

'Your fiancee?' Watkins asked with a little glance at her own engagement ring.

'Yeah, she came from a really strict religious family, and she's the only girl in a family of four kids.'

'Ouch, that's gotta be rough.'

'Just a tad. What about Charlotte's phone records from Wednedsay night, what have you got there?'

'Goes down like she said, she even got a little love note from her boyfriend at bedtime.'

Adam felt a little tingle in his gut. 'Love note from the boyfriend?'

'Yeah, have a look.' Watkins handed him the paper with the record of Charlotte's incoming and outgoing texts. 'Right there, at eleven-oh-eight.'

With slightly trembling fingers, Adam held the paper gingerly like it might bite him if he wished too hard for it to be a vital clue in the case. Yet there it was, time-stamped 11:08:22 on Wednesday March fourteen - _goodnight my beautiful girl, dream wide and free for tomorrow's a fresh start.  
><em>

'Now that's curious. Any other goodnight notes like that?'

'Ummm...' Watkins shuffled papers around, scanned them. 'Yeah, but not quite of that tone. Why, what are you thinking?'

'Not quite sure yet.' He could feel the pieces and the ideas sliding around but he needed more to work with to see what shape this would take. 'Let's take a closer look at the link between Charlotte's private account and the trustfund attached from Melissa's business.'

* * *

><p>'Man, why do some women - girls - just not get it? This is not a yellow light, it is a big, red screaming stop-sign.'<p>

Esposito held up his hand, wiggled his ring finger with his wedding band under Ryan's nose, who just chuckled. 'Oh, woe is me, I'm Javi Esposito and am almost fifty and still have coeds giving me the juicy eye.'

'Who's almost fifty?' he retorted with a grin.

'You bro, you get to go first.'

'Actually Castle will on April first. Then you...and then me a few years later.'

The elevator doors to the Homicide bullpen opened and they were treated to the blurry version of Watkins rushing past them to get to a conference room with a small sheaf of papers in her hands. 'Hey, Officer, where's the fire?' Ryan joked, then followed her when she replied, 'In the conference room, we wanna talk to the feds before they go bye-bye.'

The Ry-Sposito monster stepped up their pace and headed for their GHQ of the McGyver case where they saw the table had been engulfed in paper while Adam added little number post-it notes to the upper corner of certain pages.

'Whatcha doin', Detective?' Ryan asked, half worried and half intrigued.

'Organizing my thoughts,' he replied without looking up. 'I have an idea that will probably corroborate the alibi you blew apart this morning right?'

'Like a potato in the microwave. Don't ask,' Esposito said to Ryan when he opened his mouth.

'I won't. What's it say to you, bro?'

'It says to me that Charlotte was a little thief taking from the cookie jar.'

That had everyone's attention, even Watkins'; Adam hadn't shared with her the exact nature of his brainstorm. Without missing a beat he put the numbered pages up on the white board and began to point.

'Melissa kept Charlotte on a choke-chain as far as money went, probably because Melissa was going to sell her daughter just like her other clients and was grooming her for a high payoff. That's despicable enough, but when we start to look into things a little more closely, Charlotte wasn't so stupid with money as her mother believed. She had the account set up so that every time she made a transaction - debit purchase, EasyWeb banking, whatever - it put a little bit into a savings account. An account that was her name alone. Melissa couldn't touch it.'

'Interesting,' Esposito murmured; he and Meredeth had a similar set-up for saving for their children's college funds.

'From the looks of things, Melissa was trying to teach her daughter about financial solvency but something happened last September that she started upping the amount of money that she was depositing into the account.'

'She was getting ready to run,' Ryan murmured. 'Something set her off and she was getting a nest-egg set up.'

'Bingo. Which brings us to the boyfriend.'

Adam tacked up more pages, including a snapshot of Ursula Tassel. 'I contacted Ms. Tassel, now Missus Marks at the Pure Spirits Christian commune. She told me how she was forced by Jedidiah and Paul Bell to give up her baby conceived out of wedlock. She was beaten within an inch of her life once the baby was born when she wanted to keep him.

'Tell me she told this to Corey.'

'Every word. What are the odds that he and Charlotte were biding their time, getting things in place so that they could expose Melissa and all her shenanigans, and then run off to like Bora Bora or something?'

'Bora Bora?' Esposito repeated.

'Lindsay and I are looking into remote destinations for our honeymoon. But you get my point.'

'Yeah I get your point, bro.' Ryan looked at the board, considered what they'd learned. 'Yeah, I'd buy that. Charlotte's going to snap sooner or later if she hasn't already and Melissa, had she lived, would not have liked the results.'

'Says the voice of experience?' Watkins inquired.

'Sort of. My middle sister, Dana, she went a little nuts when she went to college. It was her first time away from home and she turned into a bit of a party animal. Anyways, back on topic. Adam, you and I met Jedidiah Marks, he was the bruiser we encountered when we went to the commune in person. Think he knows about Corey connecting back to Melissa and Charlotte and finding out who his birth mother was?'

Adam could hear the question not being asked and nodded. 'If I'd been forced to give up a firstborn child - a son no less - I'd wanna be keeping tabs on him, making sure he's doing alright.'

'If it were me, I'd be out for blood, finding out what Melissa did,' Watkins chipped in; she looked around as the others groaned. 'What?'

'That's what Ryan was implicitly saying,' Esposito explained quietly.

'Ohhh. My bad. Continue.'

'As Watkins pointed out, what we have here is probably a young man looking for answers on his birth mother and not liking what he hears, and then things get out of control,' Adam went on. 'We need Corey back in here, but we need the surveillance footage more.'

Ryan grinned. 'Please let me put him on speaker-phone, please please please?'

'Alright, son,' Esposito laughed and dialed Riley Fontina in CSU's AV lab; with everyone in the know now that Riley and Andrews, his lovely fiancee and fellow CSU tech, were expecting a little CSU of their own Ryan loved to bug the shit out of his pal.

'Cheese Whiz, what's your beef?' Riley answered in a voice more than a little tired.

'Yeah, this is Storks Unlimited, where do I send the life-time supply of resuable nappies?'

'Oh, hahaha, Ryan, you're full of shit.' But Riley sounded bright and cheerful at the joke. 'How can I help?'

'Where are you with the videos from Match Made in Manhattan, bro?'

'ETA is about fifteen minutes. Oh, and Espo?'

Esposito grinned, knowing what was probably coming next. 'Yeah, Riley?'

'You were right about those second trimester hormones. I'm a tired but very happy man today.'

Esposito let out a chuckle at Ryan's screwed up expression, then patted his partner's shoulder. 'Now you'll get to go to CSU and have the image of Andrews and Riley banging each other like-'

'Stop it, man! Bad enough I saw you and Mere going at it, why you insist on adding to the pain?'

'Because I can.'


	37. A Bad Turn

The bleakness of the implications of Adam's theory temporarily left when Ryan walked in to the AV lab in CSU to see riley in fine first-time daddy-to-be style - he was trying without much success to get Andrews with her adorable little bump off her feet. Andrews, being Andrews, was naturally refusing to be ordered around.

'Stop hovering.'

'I'm not hovering, but you've been on your feet enough already today.'

'It's ten-thirty, Riley, I've got another five hours to go.'

'And you've already been around solvents and chemicals since seven this morning. Sit down.'

Ryan only shook his head - he'd been the daddy like that once and his wife had been just as stubborn as Andrews was, if not moreso. Still, it was fun to watch the Cheese Whiz get his ass kicked by his knocked-up fiancee.

'Ribaldo Leonardo Fontina, do not make me use your middle name again. I don't like it one bit.'

'Alright, alright.'

'But I wouldn't mind a little footrub.' Now, because she knew she'd won Andrews sat down, propped her feet on the rolling footstool and wiggled them back and forth. 'We are feeling a little tired now that you mention it.'

'I told you,' Riley teased her, sitting down to attend to her feet, then looking up when Ryan rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. 'Hey, check my outbox, I got what you need all set.'

'You're a diamond, bro.' Ryan found the file and the disc in the outbox, then grinned at Andrews. 'How's the bump, mama?'

'Hungry. The bump wants a turkey club and fries for lunch,' she informed Riley who grinned.

'I'll call in a few favours.'

Ryan left them to their cute devices, thought about how excited and anxious they were at such a joy. It made his thoughts circle back to the case, all the questions the parents and the children would face about their identity made his head hurt, so Ryan had no choice but to shove it aside for now.

He could - would - grieve for them later. Right now he had his job to do to wrap this unholy shit-storm up.

He returned to the conference room to see Adam and Esposito bro-dapping knuckles with Watkins, Adam giving the young pretty officer a shoulder squeeze by the neck.

'You are a genius, Watkins. You hear that Ryan?' Adam beamed like a little boy who'd finally gotten the right answer in math class. 'This woman's going to be the next Chief of Police. Tell them what you figured out.'

'I figured out where Charlotte was skimming money from,' she started and Ryan grinned widely.

'No shit?'

'No shit. Charlotte was transferring her own trust-fund out into a third-party account so it looked like Melissa had been hacked and then taking the money from the third-party

'That's not the best part.'

'The third-party is a joint account she had with Corey Shelley.'

'And sometimes it falls right into your lap.' Ryan came over and dapped knuckles with Watkins himself, then held up the disc. 'You wanna watch it on video?'

'Sure. Where's the popcorn?'

Ten minutes later, they were crowded around the viewing screen watching Riley's neat editing work with Watkins' requested popcorn being passed around. The first angle Riley was covering was the little hallway from the street into the reception room. At eight-forty-four, there was the movement of the door and they watched as Corey Shelley walked in; Adam's eye immediately went to his right hand where he appeared to be trying to hide the fact he was clutching something.

'What's that in his hand,' he asked to no one in particular. 'Ryan pause it.'

'Sure.'

Ryan did so, and Adam hopped up from his chair, squinted at the screen. 'Zoom a little? Right...there! Stop!'

Adam pointed to it and grinned when he saw what it was. 'Watkins, tell me that's a scalpel and I'll be making my wife very happy tonight.'

'Wife?' Esposito lifted his eyebrows, pretending to be surprised. 'You and Lindsay elope or something?'

'You know what I mean,' he sneered jovially.

'Lindsay will be a satisfied woman because that's not just a scalpel, that's a ten-blade. The most common surgical tool, not just used in hospitals but in biology labs too.'

'Corey's pre-med, he'd have plenty of access to them in labs,' Esposito pointed out.

'Yes he would and it wouldn't be questioned if he took one home by 'accident' in his work-kit, would it?'

'Keep playing the vid, Ryan,' Adam told him and the group continued to watch as they saw Corey shove open the door, leaving it wide enough for them to see Melissa at the desk and Corey on his feet, pointing at her and letting loose what appeared to be a long pent-up verbal firestorm. Melissa, amazingly, remained cool as a cucumber sitting at her desk with her hands folded. Only when Corey pulled something from his pocket and showed it to her did Melissa react and leap to her feet, storming around the counter and drilling her index fingertip into his broad chest. Whatever it was they said - there was no audio since it was a surveillance footage only tape - must have been the deal breaker, because Corey let the scalpel slip to the floor and he backhanded Melissa.

It was a nasty fight and they could see that it was not going to end well as Corey and Melissa grappled, and he finally succeeded in wrapping his dinner-plate sized hands around her throat, shaking and squeezing until they saw her legs stop moving. With an amazing amount of control after so violent a fight, Corey retrieved the scalpel he'd dropped and lowered it to Melissa's face. Even Ryan and Esposito, seasoned homicide veterans of nearly twenty years, had to look away until he was finished. When the disc went to black, then the menu of the next angle option, the entire room let out a breath they'd been collectively holding.

'Well, it looks like we've got our killer,' Watkins said simply. 'But...'

'Yeah, there's a big ol' but in there isn't there?' Ryan agreed.

'Why go to all this trouble to get rid of Melissa if Charlotte and Corey were planning to run?' Adam mused aloud.

'Maybe they thought it was the only way they could expose Melissa completely, so that no-one could get to her files and alter them?'

'Good idea Watkins, but she was fairly well insulated. The fact she limited the number of people who had access to them helps us out a great deal,' Ryan said, wheels turning in his head. 'My gut still tells me that Charlotte isn't so innocent in all of this and we need to figure out how. Okay. Okay, here's what we're going to do. Watkins, call Markaway, tell him you and I are coming with video footage to back up a warrant for Corey Shelley's arrest. Espo, you and Adam are going to find Charlotte and bring her in for formal questioning. I don't care what tantrums she throws, you get her ass here, you hear me?'

'Yes sir,' they chorused, Espo adding, 'Honey-Milk ever tell you how hot you are when you're in charge.'

'Bite me, Javi.'

'That's falls into your wife's To-Do List, not mine.'

On that cheerful note, Esposito left while Ryan finished give out his orders. 'Adam, once we get the warrants from Markaway, you and Watkins are going to arrest Corey while I talk to him about the federal side of things.'

'Arrest him?' Adam tried not to get excited. 'Like, I'm the leading officer?'

'You got potatoes in your ears or what?'

'No, sir, Detective. Let's go Watkins.'

They scuttled off and Ryan took one more look at the frozen image from the video surveillance, shook his head.

* * *

><p>'Sounds like you're having a pretty exciting day, sweetie.'<p>

'I'm going on my first solo arrest, I'd say that's damn exciting.'

Lindsay laughed as she listened to Adam, giddy as a little kid, while she poked at what was pretending to be a Greek salad - three olives, a couple of chunks of onion and two cherry tomatoes in a bowl of lettuce was not a Greek salad. 'Well, that sounds more productive than my day, I-'

'Lindsay!'

'Gotta go. Love you.' She hung up, saw Cannell standing in the doorway.

'Let's go, incoming trauma.'

'Okay.'

Lindsay dumped the remains of the sad little cafeteria salad into the trash, followed her resident out to the ambulance bay of the ER and was right there with Cannell as the paramedics fired off statistics.

'White male, age twenty, multiple stab woulds to the chest and upper back, found in his dorm room of Hudson U.'

Cannell barked orders while Lindsay looked into the large man's wide eyes, his pupils the size of pinheads with shock. 'Sir,' she told him, 'we'll do our best for you. What's your name?'

'Cor...ey,' he gasped out. 'Corey Sh...Sh...ell...ey.'


	38. One Unholy Mess

With Esposito taking Charlotte McGyver solo with uniforms on standby for back just in case, Adam and Watkins had indeed gone with Ryan to get the arrest warrants for Corey Shelley. Markaway hadn't even finished watching the whole tape before he'd begun to issue them. Papers hot in hand, Adam and Watkins jogged down the steps of the courthouse while Ryan hung back as planned to discuss the federal side of the case with the judge.

'This must be so exciting, your first solo arrest!'

'Easy, Watkins.' But Adam was sharing her enthusiasm in the form of a twinkle in his eye as he drummed his fingers nervously against his sidearm beneath his jacket. 'You start getting juiced, other things tend to be forgotten. Important things that give those snakes in suits known as lawyers holes to wriggle through and take their clients with them.'

'Okay. Okay, I'm cool.'

Adam watched with some fascination as she took a few deep breaths, pulled it together. Watkins was going to make an excellent detective in time, he thought, as he pulled his ringing cellphone from his pocket.

'Brennan.'

'Change of plans,' Esposito said with no patience whatsoever. 'We're heading to Saint Vincent's, Adam.'

The detective swore ripely when he heard Esposito's voice on the other end of the phone. 'Shit, what happened?'

'Someone tried to stab Corey Shelley to death. He's currently in surgery, and Charlotte is at the hospital waiting for him.'

'She is not going to be happy to see us again.'

'Well boo-fucking-hoo for her. If she has any kind of brain she'll know deep down we're not doing this to piss her off, we're trying to help her.'

Adam didn't miss the bitter derision in his fellow detective's voice, but said nothing about it, just let another thought sink in. 'He's at Saint Vincent's? Shit.'

'What?'

'That means that if he came in as a trauma case, chances are he's with Doctor Cannell and my fiancee getting treated.'

'Shit,' Ryan agreed, then sighed. 'Is that a conflict of interest?'

'It's murky. It skirts the line already since we talked to Lindsay about the bible page significance already.'

'Alright. You wait for us to get there, do not talk to anyone. Hell, don't even go in the damn building. Just wait for me.'

'You got it.'

Adam hung up, and went to get in the driver's side of the car but Watkins beat him to it. He didn't bother processing the chauvinistic response that he was the man, he should drive for he'd barely buckled his seat belt before Watkins had thrown the lights and sirens on and was peeling out of the parking space. They made it to Saint Vincent's in a fraction of the time that it would have taken Adam to get them there, with nary a crushed civilian or pedestrian to their name.

'You go in,' she told him, flipping off the noisemakers, 'I'll park and page you.'

'You got it, Marietta Andretti.'

Watkins just laughed, zipped off like the Crown Vic was a Maserati while Adam went into the ER entrance right to the desk nurse which happened to be Andrea. The sight of her downstairs instead of tending to little kids was a little surprising but Adam remembered that Andrea was a pediatric trauma specialist too. He approached reception and flashed his badge for her, where he saw she was on the phone requesting something from the pharmacy.

'No, I need three of Lotrazipam, three of Nuprin, four of Haloperidol. Hold on.' Andrea held her palm over the receiver. 'Adam, what's up, is everything okay?'

'One of our suspects in a hot case was brought in, a twenty-year-old stabbing victim?'

'Oh, I don't know about that, but I do know Esposito's here in the family lounge. Back that way-' she gesture over her right shoulder '-third door on your right.'

'Thanks.'

Adam caught Watkins eye when she came in, and they headed for the lounge where they found Esposito pacing back and forth. 'YOu get any news? Is he on his way to Lanie's place?'

'No, he's a tough guy. That's all the orderly was able to tell me since I'm a cop not family. And until we can see Doctor Cannell or Doctor Sabern, we won't know anymore.'

'How long until-'

_Doctor Sabern, Doctor Cannell please report to the ER family lounge. Doctor Cannell, Doctor Sabern, ER family lounge_, Andrea's voice rang over the PA system, making Esposito point towards the speaker in the ceiling. 'Third time since I got here they've paged them both. Still nothing.'

'Where is Charlotte?'

'Across the hall. She was screaming her head off when I got here, took two orderlies to wrestle her down and a few shots of something. She might not even be coherent for an interview for a few hours.'

Adam shook his head, swore under his breath. 'We're so close on this one, we can't have it fall apart now.'

'Where's Detective Ryan?' Watkins said, looking around. 'He should be here, shouldn't he?'

'He's good as a go-between for the feds and Adam's the one who had this brainstorm in the first place,' Esposito reminded her, then pokered up when he saw both Lindsay and Cannell come in. 'Doc, what's the word?'

'He's a very lucky young man,' Cannell sighed, scratching her head. 'Whoever went at him somehow managed to miss the major arteries. He's lost a lot of blood and he'll need quite a bit of physiotherapy but he should be able to be out of here in a week or two.'

'Adam, what's going on?' Lindsay asked, her eyes solemn as she studied her fiancee.'

'Corey is our prime suspect in our murder case,' he replied evenly, and Lindsay looked to Cannell for guidance.

'I think it would be in your best interest to sit this one out, Doctor Sabern,' Cannell replied while her eyes stayed on Adam's face. 'You're an excellent trauma doctor but there is always another case and given your connection to this one, it's probably a good idea to stay on the bench.'

'Understood, Doctor,' Lindsay said quietly; it had a totally different flavour, Adam noted, when Lindsay was giving way to her resident than to her family. He liked this one much better as it meant she was being given a voice, not a slap. 'Would you like me to keep an eye on Charlotte McGyver with the detectives? I'm sure they want to talk to her as well.'

'That's acceptable.'

'When will Mister Shelley, or Miss McGyver be ready for an interview?' Esposito inquired.

'Mister Shelley will be in surgery for at least another two hours, followed by two in the recovery room, so you wouldn't be able to see him until at least...' Cannell checked her watch, did the math. 'Five o'clock this afternoon. Charlotte should be able to give your detectives something in an hour or so.'

'Alright.' Esposito looked at them. 'You two head back to the precinct, con-fab with Ryan, I'll keep an eye on Charlotte here.'

'Sir, I can do that,' Watkins volunteered. 'It's basically a babysitting detail, and I'm a lowly uniform. You're a second-grade, Detective Esposito, you'll be more valuable back at the precinct doing whatever it is you do when the uniforms aren't around.'

'You're sure, Watkins?'

She nodded firmly. 'Yes sir, I'm sure.'

'Alright, you're here and you call the moment she opens her eyes. And stop calling me sir.'

'Yes sir.'

'It's just her way,' Adam jumped in when Esposito opened his mouth to correct her once more. 'Save yourself a headache, bro.'

Esposito lifted his hands, then offered his card to Cannell. 'The moment Mister Shelley is coherent for it, you call us at this number.'

'I will, Doctor, it's not my first time treating someone on the run from the law.'

With an amused little smile on her lips, Cannell left with Lindsay, giving her instructions on Charlotte's care while she went back into surgery; Watkins followed Lindsay out like a shadow. Back in the lounge, Adam and Esposito calculated the next move.

'We head back to the precinct and we wrap this up good and tight so that when Corey Shelley wakes up, the first thing he hears is he's going to jail for murder and Charlotte is...well, we'll get there on her.'

They'd just cleared the ER sliding doors to the parking garage when Esposito's cellphone rang. 'Esposito. Yeah. Okay. No, we're on our way, we'll fill you in when we get there. Captain K-Pow wants us back at the precinct for a debrief before the feds take off.'

'How'd she get that name anyways?' Adam asked, curious.

'Long story, tell you later. We gotta stay in the zone right now.'

'Duly noted. I'll drive,' he said when they got to the car and he took out his keys; he let out a yelp when Esposito neatly nipped them out of his hands. 'Dude! My ride!'


	39. Waiting on Doctor's Orders

The first thing Adam noticed when they arrived back in the Homicide bullpen was the buzz of activity. Monday mornings always had a buzz to them, but this one in particular had a different flavour to it. The next thing that struck him was that their conference room had been cleaned out. The GHQ they'd set up for the case was nowhere to be found.

Finally, his swirling brain put it together - the rest of the homicide bullpen had been let in on the investigation secret now that the case, or at least the federal side of the case - had been wrapped up. Everyone was talking about it, it seemed, as he made his way to his desk.

'Hey superstar!'

Adam hadn't even sat down when he was being given adulation; a glance up had his heart tripping a little since the compliment was from none other than Kate Beckett. 'I'm not there yet,' he tried to protest but Beckett waved him off, held out a little box.

'You cracked a case wide open for the feds, that deserves a treat.'

Adam took the box and had to laugh when he saw the contents - double chocolate chop cookies and raspberry sandwiches. 'I see RJ was up to no good on the weekend,' he commented; though he really wasn't in the mood for something sweet, he knew RJ would somehow find out he didn't taste one right away.

'So where are you guys right now?'

'Tying up lose ends. We have our killer-'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah, the daughter's boyfriend, and we have a motive that we need to pin.'

Beckett cocked her head to the side. 'That's not all. What's the other thing that has you frowning over my son's cookies?'

'I know Charlotte, the daughter, is involved directly in her mother's death and I have no idea how the fuck I am going to prove it without being able to talk to her.'

'Where are her and the killer now?'

'That part of the reason for my frustration.' Adam took anther bite of cookie, rubbed the back of his neck. 'Corey, the boyfriend, was stabbed multiple times in the chest, we just got word of it when we went to talk to Charlotte, who was hysterical and had to be sedated when she followed his ambulance to the hospital.'

'Don't let that fool you,' Beckett told him, pointing her own cookie at her colleague.

'I'm not. I know she's into theatrics so we'll think just that, you know? Poor little girl, she's been through so much, there's no way she could be a killer. No, I'm not buying it for a New York minute.'

'Good man. How's your cookie?'

'Outstanding.' To prove it, Adam crammed in another few bites and contemplated evening the box out by taking one of Lindsay's raspberry creme sandwiches. 'Seriously, the kid is in what, kindergarten?'

'Finishing up grade one.'

'And he bakes like this? He'll be seducing girls in junior high with baked Alaska at this rate,' he teased her, making Beckett narrow her eyes at him. 'Maybe he'll make Dell and Tessi a wedding cake.'

'Speaking of which, how are the wedding plans going with you and Lindsay? Are her parents still dead set against coming to the ceremony?' At adam's low snarl, she got her answer and switched up her question. 'Has Lindsay started to pick out a dress yet?'

'Yeah, her next day off, Mere is taking her to the tailor she gets all her formalwear done at, Van something.'

'Van Valkan Tailors. They're good and they will be afforadable for your budget.'

'I don't know.' Adam scratched his neck, swiveled his chair. 'Our budget isn't like a famous writer's or a wealthy woman's like Andrea's. I think she's maxed at seven-hundred for her dress since she wants Manolo Blahnik heels for the ceremony.'

'Van Valkan really means it when they say they can find something for every budget.'

'Detectives.'

They straightened up when Claire and Bryan approached them, still solemn-eyed but looking rather satisfied with themselves. 'Thank you for everything,' Claire said, 'especially in helping my agent not blow his cover.'

'We had-slash-have similar goals, it wasn't a hard decision to make,' Adam replied, getting to his feet to shake their hands. 'Just stuck in a holding pattern now until our killer and a possible accomplice are coherent enough to understand what kind of hell we're gonna rain down on their pathetic little brains.'

'Your vehemence is understandable,' Claire replied.

'People who use religion, who use women, the way they did stick in my craw,' Adam agreed, 'but worse than that are the people who use the fact their a man or a woman to get away with murder.'

'I agree.' Bryan shifted on hsi feet, looked at the box Beckett held in her hands. 'Whatcha got there?'

'Cookies. Want one?'

'Sure.'

Both federal agents dipped their hands in as Beckett told them her son had made them and they made the appropriate yummy noises. 'So, that's it then,' Bryan said around his mouthful. 'We're out of here.'

'Thank you again,' adam told them with earnest sincerity as they headed for the elevator. 'And you know where to find us if you need more cases busted open like a late summer watermelon.'

Bryan gave them a jaunty little salute as the elevator doors closed; they were barely gone before Esposito came up, took one of the cookies and was reward with a slap on his hand. 'Ow! What the hell? Claire and Bryan got cookies! I'm not the pizza-eating dog.'

'Yeah, how's little Tortuga feeling?'

Esposito rolled his eyes. 'I don't know who was howling more at the prospect of Tortuga staying the night at the vet's, Tessi or the dog herself.'

'She loves her dog, what's wrong with that?'

'She treats it like a baby. You know she wants a birthday gift from Tortuga and fully expects her to have a little card with paw prints on it?'

'Blame that one on Mere, since she always had Arturo buy stuff for the kids too,' Beckett laughed.

Adam joined in, then ended on a groan. 'God I am so sick of this waiting around bullshit! Can't we do what we did with Christine Raglan and stand the doctor on his head until he spits nickels?'

'Until he what?' Esposito goggled.

'Old saying of my dad's, means until they do whatever you want them to do.'

'Oh. No, we can't because we aren't just going to question a witness, we're going for the jugular.' He paused. 'That came out wrong.'

'In the meantime, you might try giving Watkins a hand with the paperwork. Uncool to dump it all on a rookie, you two,' Beckett said, still brandishing her biscuit like a rapier.

'Yes Mom,' they chorused and Beckett simply narrowed her eyes.

'It's Detective Mumum to you both.'

'Yes Detective Mumum,' they replied making her smile as her cellphone rang and she was off to take the call; still at his desk Adam groaned again.

'Something, anything would be better right now, even picking out wedding centrepieces.'

'Oh, Lindsay's not turning into bridezilla and making you be involved?' Esposito chuckled.

'I like being involved, it's my wedding too, but seriously, who is going to care if the centrepieces are white orchids or gardenias? Are the Flower Police coming? I don't think so.'

'Well, Carey will be there and he's quite the little botanist. He'd probably know the difference.'

'Shut up,' was all Adam could think of to say.

'And RJ, too, he insists on the right kinds of flowers for Shane to get Alexis according to the season,' Esposito continued, loving how he got to rub it in.

'Were you this rotten when you were getting married?'

'Oh yeah, I was,' he laughed, then paused when the deskline rang and Adam picked up.

'Brennan. Oh, hey honey, we were just talking about you. Oh, sure, yeah, you got it.' He pressed a button, replaced the receiver. 'Go ahead, Doctor Sabern.'

'Corey Shelley didn't make it out of surgery,' Lindsay said sadly. 'After we spoke to you, his blood pressure bottomed out and his injuries were too extensive to recover from.'

'How is Charlotte?'

'She doesn't know yet. We haven't told her and we think it'd be wise if there were some cops around in case she goes a little off the deep end.'

'Okay. Thanks Doctor Sabern.'

'That's Doctor Honey to you, Detective Brennan, and later tonight, maybe we can-'

'Lindsay!' Adam looked at Esposito who was trying with all his might not to laugh too loudly. 'You're on speaker, remember?'

'Oopsie. Ah, well, if it's Espo listening in I'm sure he's already had three dirty thoughts about Meredeth before I hang up.'

Adam told his fiancee he loved her, then hung and looked at Esposito. 'Let's rock and roll.'


	40. At the Hospital

When they got to the hospital, Adam wasn't surprised to find both Lindsay and Ryan outside waiting for them; Ryan was on the phone to his kids while Lindsay was texting when they pulled up and parked.

'What's the status?'

'Corey Shelley's body has been moved to the morgue and his next of kin has been notified. Doctor Parrish-Robbins of the OCME has also been contacted as the doctors in charge of Mister Shelley's care are aware of the criminal circumstances surrounding his death.'

'And Charlotte?'

'Still sedated. Cannell wants to bring her out of it soon, before Mister Shelley's parents arrive to claim the body.' Lindsay sighed. 'Shows you just how quickly things go south in surgery.'

'What measures were taken,' Esposito asked, and wasn't surprised when Lindsay gave him a slightly frosty look. 'No offense meant Lindsay, you know that.

'It's Doctor Sabern right now, Detective.'

'Very well, Doctor, what measures were taken?'

'Ask Doctor Cannell, she was in the room when it happened, I was doing charts while keeping an eye on your other suspect with Waktins,' Lindsay sniffed and turned on her heel to walk back into the hospital.

'What crawled up her ass,' Esposito wondered and now it was Adam's turn to laugh.

'You're practically interrogating her on her turf and you wonder why she's pissy?'

'I heard that, Detective Brennan,' Lindsay added over her shoulder, giving Esposito a chance to snicker and point himself.

'Haha, you got in trouble.'

'Okay are you like twelve today or what?'

'The second one, and trust me,' he emphasized as he thought of the awesome wake-up sex he'd had with Meredeth, 'you don't wanna know why.'

Once inside, the trio of detectives followed her up to the ICU where they found Watkins in her uniform reviewing case notes while she flicked her glance up every so often to Charlotte sleeping it off. Ryan patted her shoulder to get her attention. 'Hey, how's the suspect?'

'Sleeping the way I wish I could. It's been a rough couple of nights and Brianna's been working late too so not a lot of room for loving. Nothing cures insomnia like a screaming orgasm or two. Or three or four, if you're lucky.'

'Ain't it the truth,' Esposito grinned widely, making both Adam and Ryan groan. 'Why don't you go grab yourself a drink or something.'

'I'm good, I think I should be here when Charlotte wakes up. I'm the only female cop on this investigative team,' Watkins reminded him. 'That could be a handy tool to have on hand in case things go tits up.'

'I have a feeling they won't,' Ryan said, trying not to wince at Watkins' choice of phrasing. He reached into his field bag, pulled out the information he was able to get through Markaway. 'We've got some things to clear up with Charlotte and the only way she is getting out of it is either if she cries lawyer or she croaks.'

'Damn right we do,' Esposito agreed.

In the bed, Charlotte moaned and fussed a little, then settled once more which had Lindsay nodding. 'Right. As much as I know all four of you want to be in here to see her go to pieces and call it theatre

'Lindsay, are you actually protecting her?' Adam asked in disbelief and was widely relieved when she shook her head.

'No, but the law says the patient is entitled to the best care I can provide. You want her coherent for when you kick her ass, let her rest quietly for now. Go down to the lounge across from the nurses' station and-'

She stopped when Cannell swung in, looping her stethoscope around her neck. 'Doctor Sabern, we are in the clear to cut back the patient's sedation.'

'Yes ma'am.' Without missing a beat Lindsay stepped over to Charlotte's bedside and did something to the IV drip attached to her wrist.

'She should be coming around in about twenty minutes or so, Detectives,' Cannell told them. 'I will find you in the lounge Doctor Sabern recommended shortly. Only two of you can be in here when she comes back to consciousness.'

'Watkins, you and I will take her. Adam, you and Esposito prepare yourselves to handle Corey Shelley's family when they arrive,' Ryan instructed.

'Good plan.'

Adam and Esposito left, while Ryan and Watkins remained in the room with the two doctors. 'What are the odds she'll careen right back into hysterics once we tell her that Corey's dead?' Watkins inquired; Ryan felt a surge of pride. She was starting to ask the right questions earlier now.

'She'll still have remnants of the anesthetic in her system, so she won't be sitting up and quoting Shakespeare if that's what you mean but she will be with it enough to understand what you are talking about and make decisions.'

'Good. That's what we need right now.'

Ryan took a seat beside Watkins; there was no point to staying on his feet at the moment unless he wanted to truly feel every second of the wait time. That's what this case had been like, he thought, endless waiting interspersed with bursts of intense action both mental and physical. But then that was the nature of police work - making sure the paperwork was followed and done and filed so that when it came time for the action to happen there would be no chance of slime-ball lawyers springing the criminals on account of police fuck-ups.

He was a damn good cop, Ryan told himself, then slid his gaze to Watkins, as was the officer sitting beside him. With the right trainer and seasoning, the right opportunities to show off her skills, Watkins would go far. Thank God they lived in a day and age now that the fact she was marrying a woman wouldn't be reason to hold her back; it wasn't so long ago such a simple choice of who you loved would keep you from such things as job promotions or health benefits.

And there it was, he thought again; he kept circling back to the idea that all those women had had those choices taken away from them the moment the money changed hands. The children too didn't realize choices had been taken away from them either, because they were born into it. They weren't even being raised as children, Ryan realized with a chilling jolt. They were being raised as legacies and workers. Colonizers, like ants or bees. Jesus that's terrifying, he told himself.

Leaning over, he gave Watkins a nudge in the ribs. 'Evelyn,' he murmured, using her first name to get her attention.

'Yes sir.'

'Wow you really are getting annoying with that,' he teased her and made her laugh lowly. 'How did you folks feel when you told them you were into women?'

'Well, I think on some level they always knew but since I came out when I was fifteen they've had a lot of time to get used to the idea,' Watkins replied. 'Not to say it was all cake, though. When I started university, they really struggled with it because they worried I would be bullied or ostracized and already they had my brother to contend with who would boink anything with breasts and a pulse.'

'But they understood it was your choice to make. They didn't try to stop you.'

'No, they didn't. In the end they could see how happy I am with Brianna and they cried just like any parents when we told them on Sunday night we're getting married. Mom can't wait to design me a dress.' Watkins tilted her head to give Ryan a considering look. 'Why do you ask?'

'Just thinking about the other women on the commune, how they had a tonne of choices taken away from them since they were sold like livestock to fill out the stables.'

'Ah.' She shut her files, dropped them in her bag. 'Yeah, I understand what you mean. The question I keep circling back to is, how many of those women maybe don't even like men at the root of it, what happens to them? How does that fit into their twisted little Utopian farce?'

'That's a good one.'

'My mom's best friend growing up, they did everything together and then she finds out when her friend's husband died after twenty-three years of marriage that she'd been gay the entire time.' Watkins shrugged when Ryan remained goggle-mouthed. 'It does happen, more often you might-'

'Sh!'

Ryan cut her off sharply when he saw Charlotte stir in the bed, her eyelids fluttering. She smacked together her dry lips and groaned. In a flash he was on his feet, at her bedside, watching as her eyes cleared and focused.

'Charlotte McGyver, you remember me?'

'Fuck off. I don't have to talk to you,' she mumbled in a half-whine.

'I'll overlook the fact right now that swearing at me could be considered verbal assault of a police officer if you give me a straight answer.'

Charlotte actually had the audacity to look put out. 'What do you want?'

'Tell me why you set Corey up to kill your mother.'


	41. Tale Unraveling

'What are you talking about?'

'I'm talking about you and Corey plotting together to murder your mother, and then you double crossing him, Charlotte.' Ryan's face was cold as ice as he said it. 'I'm done being jerked around by you.'

The frostiness of his tone and expression had Watkins instictively putting her hand on her sidearm, as Charlotte winced 'Don't you have any decency? My mother was murdered and my boyfriend is in surgery after someone stabbed him. Plus, and I'm not sure if your type can even understand this, I am on bedrest after finding my boyfriend in the lab storage room at school and being the one to call the cops while hysterical,' she told him pointedly and rolled over in her bed.

Undeterred, Ryan skirted the foot of the bed and continued to stare her down. 'Yeah, you're a great actress Charlotte. But you're not as clever as you think you are.'

'See? Just like my mother, always talking down to me.'

'Oh, you're smarter than Melissa thought you were, especially about money. We found your little hidey hole of funds. Two-hundred and eighty-five grand makes a nice start in somewhere like Paraguay or Argentina. You know, non-extradition countries.'

That got her attention, and had Charlotte sitting up like a rocket in her hospital bed. 'How dare you, you have no right to-'

'We have every right when the evidence tells us that you and Corey were fully aware of what your mother was doing through her dating service business and planning to not only rip her off but turn her in if you couldn't off her.'

Watkins forced her eyes to stay in her head as Ryan revealed this, wondered how in sweet fucking Moses he'd found that information out but he was already barreling on.

'Between the emails, the bank accounts and the text messages between your mother your boyfriend, and you, we've got enough to get you on embezzlement of funds, racketeering and conspiracy to murder. That's all precluding the first degree murder charge too.'

'What first degree murder charge?' Charlotte tried to sound pissy but only came off as scared.

'Doctor Sabern.'

Lindsay stepped forward and in her best medical professional voice quietly said, 'Corey didn't make it through surgery. He was pronounced dead at one-sixteen pm.'

'No.'

It was a single breathless word, but nowhere in her tone did Ryan hear any of the usual denial with which loved ones always spoke upon hearing news of death.

'No, that can't be right,' Charlotte continued. 'He should be fine, the paramedics said he-'

'How would you know what they said, Charlotte?' Ryan flipped open his notes. 'The officers on scene said you were hysterical and incoherent. It's almost two hours later and you're sitting there telling me that you remember that after you had to be sedated?'

Once more, Ryan's favourite Marv quote from _Sin City_ came back to him - _Gotcha you little bastard let's see you hop around now_. Charlotte was, appropriately enough, very much like Kevin - silently lethal. He watched as her eyes stayed sharp and cool, calculating like a shark seeking out the weakest seal in the ocean.

'Charlotte,' he said, 'why did you want your mother dead?'

'I didn't want her dead, it was Corey who killed her! He told me after I figured it out, when I was going through her cellphone!'

'Her cellphone is in evidence,' Ryan replied evenly. 'Try again.'

'I don't have to talk to you. I can get a lawyer, you know.' Now it was a smirking child that sat in the bed. She actually folded her arms acros her chest in petulant and immature defiance. 'A good one, too, since I've got inheritance coming from my murdered mother.'

'Yes, but here's the thing. Since you're being charged with all of those things I mentioned- what where they again Watkins?'

Ryan turned to Watkins deliberately, to let her into this impromptu interrogation as his backup. She politely cleared her throat and recited, 'embezzlement of funds, racketeering and conspiracy to murder. Oh and since her boyfriend died, she is also going down for first-degree murder too.'

'And that means since you are going to be officially charged with all of those crimes, Charlotte, you don't have access to one red cent of those ill-gotten gains.'

'You can't prove shit,' Charlotte sneered.

'See, that's where you're wrong.' Ryan shifted his weight, cocked a hip as he folded his arms over his chest. 'I've got some really good pals over in CSU, especially in DNA and the AV lab, and they've got the electronics from the bio-lab where you hunted Corey up, and being smaller and weaker than him, used quantity instead of quality with the scalpel you palmed. The same make, brand, hell the same serial set as the one that cut your mother's eye out.'

It wasn't a lie - Riley and Andrews had done their fieldwork double-time for him so that when he made it to the hospital, he already had all files waiting in his NYPD inbox.

But the how and why of the technical stuff could wait. It was all there, confirmed, he just wanted - needed - to see the poor little mama's girl skin covering Charlotte so thinly split like a roasted yam. Ryan knew it would happen, it would just be a matter of the right button to push.

'Charlotte,' he said in his voice normally saved for when Mallory got her knickers in a twist over her latest animal rights crusade, 'I'm going to give you one last chance. You come clean in the next sixty seconds and tell me straight from the start how it all went down and we'll push for diminished capacity consideration with the ADA.'

'All due respect, Detective, fuck you.'

Ryan said nothing, just blinked, glanced at his watch, then at Watkins. 'That sixty seconds, Officer?'

'I'd count it. And the count's gone up to six, as we're now going to tack on verbal assault on a cop.'

'Thank you Watkins.'

'My pleasure sir.'

Wakins moved to stand beside Ryan in solidarity. 'So, what's it going to be Miss McGyver? You're still going to have to tell us sooner or later even though the evidence is already saying volumes.'

'He's not dead.' Charlotte squinted at them, trying to get back some of her footing on a higher ground. 'You're bluffing. I saw that bitch-' she pointed to Lindsay who'd remained silent as a tree by the doorway '-making lovey-dovey time before with the other plainclothes cop.'

'Ma'am if I were to lie to you about something that severe, I would lose my medical license,' Lindsay replied smoothly, 'and I worked too damn hard to blow it over something like this.'

'You're still not doing much for your whole 'poor little sad girl' image right now, Charlotte,' Ryan added in an almost tired voice. 'so for the last time, please cut the crap and give us a straight answer.'

'And I thought I told you to go fuck yourself. And while I'm at it, when I get that wonderful lawyer, I'm going to instruct him to bring about harassment charges against you and those other idiots who were investigating me and not looking for my mother's killer.'

'You know, I'm trying to decide if you're stupid or stubborn. Watkins, what do you think?'

'Fifty-fifty,' she replied, knowing it would crisp Charlotte's nuggets like a grease fire; Watkins wasn't disappointed when she saw a hot little flash in Charlotte's eyes.

'Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too.' Ryan stared Charlotte down until she blinked, looked at her lap. Knowing he'd won for the moment, he rose to his full height. 'We'll be back in a few to talk to you. Watkins you cool here?'

'Yes sir.'

Knowing it was pointless to tell her he didn't need to be called 'sir' Ryan left to find Adam and Esposito; he found them downstairs coming in through the visitors' entrance, both hanging up from calls on their cellphones.

'Charlotte's in denial about being sunk,' Ryan informed them. 'She thinks she's going to get a lawyer to sue us for harrassment.'

'I just had a look at the footage Riley culled from the lab security cams and she must be bone stupid if she thinks that will get tossed,' Esposito started, then groaned when the PA system hailed them a Code White was going on floor four. 'Man, why do they have to run these drills when we're on investigation here?'

'Nurse.' Ryan snagged a rail-thin man in Saint Vincent's trademark scrubs with equally thin blond hair. 'What's Code White mean?'

'Patient has taken someone hostage.'

Ryan felt a chill in his gut then looked at his colleagues. 'Guys,' he said in a low voice, barely controlled nerves hovering under the surface. 'Guys!'

'What is it?'

'Charlotte's being held on floor four. Code White means a patient has taken someone hostage.'

They looked at each other for three microseconds before Esposito blurted out, 'Sweet zombie Jesus. Lindsay and Watkins are up there.'


	42. Step Up, Step Off

The trio of cops took the stairs up to the fourth floor and weren't surprised to find the hallways empty, the patient doors closed save for the room where the crisis was taking place. The hospital security, along with two burly-looking nurses - one of whom happened to be Daniel Brick - where forming a horseshoe around the doorway.

Adam felt his heart stop when he recognized the room as that belonging to Charlotte McGyver. It started up once more when he saw Lindsay's sneaker peaking out from the nurses' station directly across the hall; he knew her protocol was to remain invisible and Adam was never more thankful to only see a fraction of his fiancee in his life.

'Lindsay's okay,' he murmured as they moved silently but swiftly towards the scene of the conflict. 'It's Watkins.'

'You don't know that,' Esposito replied, feeling a surge of brotherly protection for her the same way he'd felt protective of Lili whenever she brought up her heinous mother-in-law. 'She could be in one of the other patient rooms, or she might have gone to the ladies' room.'

'The way she yes-sir, no-sirs us?' Ryan scoffed. 'It's her.'

Though all of the men were praying it was someone other than their rookie, when they came to the group of personnel trying to talk the patient down it was still a horrible jolt to the system as they surveyed the scene: Charlotte did indeed have Watkins hostage, one arm around her shoulders from behind while the other hand held a syringe to the delicate skin at Watkins' throat.

'Come now, Miss McGyver,' one of the security guards tried to reason with her. 'This nice officer hasn't done anything to you. There's no need for all this fuss.'

'Don't you dare talk to me like that, don't you fucking dare,' Charlotte lashed out, then caught sight of Adam, Esposito and Ryan approaching. 'Ask them, they know I've got plenty of beef with this nosy smart-ass bitch.'

'No, you don't Charlotte,' Ryan said calmly, positioning himself so her attention would be drawn away from Watkins', from the needle. 'Officer Watkins is just trying to do her job.'

'So was my mother! She helped lonely people looking for someone in the city!'

'She was also guilty of selling two hundred and forty three people over the last twenty years to the Pure Spirits Christian Commune. One of those people was Corey's biological mother. He found that out and he told you, and that's why you two hatched the plan that he would take her out.'

'No! No, that wasn't the plan at all!' Charlotte's eyes were brimming over with fury, and to Ryan's astonishment, with disappointment. 'That wasn't how it was supposed to happen!'

'Tell us, then.' Now Adam stepped forward, also positioning himself so Charlotte would have to glance back and forth between himself and Ryan, and her focused would stay away from Watkins. 'Detective Ryan has asked you

'No,' Charlotte sneered. 'All of you just don't get it, do you? I did nothing wrong! Why am I being punished for something my mother did!'

'You're not being punished for her crimes, Charlotte. Look at the woman in your arms.'

'Just another cop trying to fuck up my plan to expose that rotten bitch for who she was!'

That she could be so contradictory in under five minutes told Ryan one crucial thing - Charlotte's stability, if she had any to begin with, was rapidly deteriorating. He flicked a single glance to Esposito who nodded, stepped forward.

'Charlotte, look at the woman in your arms,' he said, repeating Adam's words verbatim.

'Just another cop.'

'No. Her name is Evelyn Watkins, she's a rookie police officer. She's from Yonkers and has an older brother, and she just got engaged over the weekend. You hurt her, there's going to be ripples in all of her families.'

To the detectives' amazement, Watkins had yet to make a peep; Adam had to wonder if she wasn't already drugged up or in shock, but her eyes were clear. For the first time since meeting her on-scene at Match Made in Manhattan, Watkins remained stoic as Charlotte continued to rail.

'I don't care if her mommy and daddy and big bro are sad when I pump her full of this shit and she's toast before she hits the floor. I just need one of you to fucking listen to me!'

'Okay Charlotte.' Ryan looked at the security guards who had yet to draw their weapons, believing they could still talk her down with violence. It was a commendable sentiment but being the cop who'd seen his share of situations like this, Ryan knew better. 'What is it you need us to hear?'

'No, not you!' Charlotte shook her head in tight little bursts. 'That one.'

She pointed to Adam with the syringe then held it once more to the pulse-point in Watkins' neck. Adam obliged her, took a small step forward. 'What is it you need to tell us.'

'You need to stop lying to me that Corey died! I just stabbed him to scare him, to remind him I'm not some weak woman! I'm my mother's child and she didn't raise a little whore or a little weakling!'

'No, she wouldn't have, being a single mother, would she?'

'Damn right she didn't! Now go get Corey and let me see him! I know that whore doctor is around here somewhere, that filthy lying slut telling me Corey's dead!'

'Charlotte. Corey is dead. That is not a lie. There were too many stab wounds and his blood pressure could not keep up with the demands his body were making.'

They all saw the first crack in her defenses as she blinked, tilted her head. 'No, no that can't be true.'

'This is now four times you've been told that he's dead, Charlotte. What possible reason would we have to lie about that?' Ryan asked her.

'He's dead? Like really dead?'

'Yes, he is. And as I told you before, we have you on video going into the lab where he was, we have the scalpel, we have you on your cellphone texting to him and to your mother too. It's over, Charlotte.'

'God.' Charlotte closed her eyes shook her head. 'This wasn't supposed to happen.'

Everyone was relaxed just enough as they saw Charlotte's shoulders slump, her hand lower the syringe form Watkins' neck; it was all the woman needed. When Ryan took another step forward, Charlotte's arm came up and she jammed the needle into Watkins neck, hit the plunger and yanked it back out. A hair-thin line of blood spurted just under Watkins' jaw but she was somehow with it enough that she reared back and head-butted Charlotte, smashing her face so more bood, this time belonging to the killer's, fountained from the obviously broken nose.

Without missing a beat, Watkins whirled and with deft moves, pinned Charlotte's arm behind her back and wrestled her to the floor. 'Charlotte McGyver you are under arrest for the murder of Corey Shelley and other charges that will be made known to you.'

The men watched in awe as she recited the Miranda rights and slapped her shiny silver cuffs on the woman who had started to sob and kick her feet like a spoiled toddler in the throes of a tantrum. When she stood up, she actually dusted her hands and sent Ryan Adam and Esposito a grin.

'There we are,' she said, just before her eyes rolled into her head and she stumbled to her right, nearly smacking herself on the counter of the nurses' station. Daniel Brick moved and caught her by the shoulders before she could hurt herself just as her eyes popped open. 'Shit, did I just faint on a crime scene?'

'You just got stuck with a needle and your adrenaline is pumping, I doubt it could be called fainting,' Esposito assured her as Ryan moved to deal with the medical personnel assisting Charlotte. 'How the hell do you stay calm when someone is jabbing at your throat with a needle like that?'

'I have an older brother, when I said I was going into the police academy, he trained me up,' Watkins replied as she sat down on the floor when her head began to spin a little. 'He'd put me in a headlock and hold his pet snake near my face to get me to practice not flinching.'

'That's tough love if I ever heard it.'

'It worked.' Watkins looked around, her vision wobbling. 'Espo, you got a twin brother?'

'No, I- shit! Doctor Sabern!' Esposito glanced over, saw Lindsay had come out of hiding to give Adam a huge bear hug. 'We need some help here!'

Though Lindsay was there in a flash, Watkins had already slumped backwards against the nurses' station. The young doctor checked the young cop's vital signs and gave a brisk nod.

'She's breathing and her pulse is slowing back to normal. She's just in sensory overload.'

'What did Charlotte jab her with?'

'Epinephrine. We use it if we need anesthetic or sedation to wear off more quickly. Don't worry, the rookie will be fine in a little while.'


	43. Calming Effects

When Charlotte McGyver had been cleaned up and taken for transportation to the Twelfth Precinct to give a far more succinct confession than the one she'd screamed out while using Watkins as a human shield, Adam stayed at the hospital to ostensibly keep an eye on Watkins. Ryan and Esposito had agreed without a quibble, knowing it was an excuse to make sure his fiancee was okay too.

'Daniel I'm fine, really,' Lindsay insisted as she brushed her hair in the staff locker room; she'd pulled a couple of string and he'd been permitted to go in with her.

'Consider my hovering practice for when we have babies.'

'God, you know what the Parrish-Robbins kids are going to be like when that happens?' she laughed, then waved her hand in front of his face when he got a glassy far-away look in his eyes. 'Adam?'

'Sorry, what?' He shook his head, focused his thoughts. 'I drifted.'

'I could tell. I was asking you if you've seen Watkins yet?'

'She's being kept until nine tonight for observation. Plenty of time.'

'Ah yes the good ol' six hour window.' Lindsay came over, sat down to face him on the bench with one leg on each side. 'I'm off at six tonight, what do you say I pick up fixings for gyros and some of the Greek ouzo you like, and we hae gyros and hard lemonade for dinner followed up with some scorching hot relief sex?'

'I say you're a genius and the best woman in the world.' Adam leaned forward, touched his lips to hers. 'I love you so much, Linds.'

'I love you right back Adam.'

'Hey, gotta ask you this. I've been meaning to all weekend and it kept slipping my mind.'

Lindsay gave him a wry smile. 'Well, you have been rather preoccupied, what with busting open a major case.'

'Why did the doctor in the ER call you Tiger?'

'Oh, Yusif?' Lindsay snickered. 'When I started here, he thought my last name was Saber and because I'm so ferocious he started calling me Tiger.'

'Of course,' Adam murmured, then gave her another kiss. When she held him close by wrapping her arms around his neck, he chuckled again. 'This isn't _General Hospital_ the doctors aren't having quickies in the on-call.'

'No just a little preview for tonight, my love.'

Adam groaned. 'Don't do things like that or the guys will never let me live down a woody while on duty.'

'Okay, okay.' Lindsay relented, and stood up, tugging him to his feet with her. 'Watkins is across the skywalk in the general care rooms.'

'Thanks.'

Adam stole one more kiss, then headed out; he wondered if he should have a gift or something for Watkins and made a reminder in his phone that he needed to hit RJ up for some cookies.

When he turned into Watkins room, he had to do a double take at the gorgeous amazon sitting beside Watkins in bed, her arm wrapped around her waist. She was the definition of glamazon with long legs and near-perfect tailor on her clothes; they stood out even more against the thin and skimpy hospital gown Watkins wore.

'Cheesey, I'm serious, go for a walk, I'm fine.'

'Not a chance you hardhard. You were stabbed, held hostage and you arrested a kook for a criminal.'

'Around here, that's just called a routine Monday,' Adam said and the glamazon looked up, as did Watkins.

'Hey! You finally came to see me.'

'I wanted to make sure Lindsay was okay.'

'I'm assuming Lindsay is your wife the doctor who was witness to the catastrophe this afternoon?' the redhead inquired.

'Fiancee. I'm guessing you're Brianna.'

'Brianna Bellamy,' she confirmed, then winced when Watkins elbowed her in the ribs. 'Ow, what?'

'Adam's here about the case. Shoo, you worrywart.'

'I'm bringing you back a snack. You want rabbit food?'

'Spinach and carrots.'

'Right. French fries it is,' Brianna replied, and when she'd given Watkins' forehead a kiss she took her leave to give the two cops some privacy.

'So,' Watkins asked, patting the space Brianna had vacated. 'What's the scoop?'

'On what?'

'On the NFL draft picks. What do you think?'

'Ryan and Esposito wrapped Charlotte up like a Christmas present this afternoon. She's still going to push for a diminished capacity defense and the ADA might buy it, depending how things shake down with the federal case. Oh and when you get sprung, I have orders from Ryan to make sure that you and Brianna make it home safely since you are a few blocks north of me.'

'That's very sweet.' Watkins thumped her head back against the pillow. 'Still can't believe I let that happen.'

'How did it happen?'

'I think she'd palmed the syringe, because Lindsay didn't have it on her when she was in the room with us and the only time she left was to hit the nurse's station right across the hallway. I stood up to look out the door to see if Corey's parents were going to come and see her and then all of a suddenly, I'm in a hammerlock.'

'You were pretty awesome to watch though.'

'Awesome my ass.'

Adam and Watkins looked over to see Ryan standing in the doorway with a little shiny purple gift bag in his hands. 'What is that? She just got knocked around a little, she didn't lose a limb!'

'According to the wisdom of my children, everyone in the hospital needs a little something,' Ryan retorted with a little sniff and he set the bag in Watkins' lap. 'Courtesy of Dell and Mally Ryan.'

Watkins lifted out the tissue paper and laughed. 'Is this a dinosaur toy?'

'Even better, it's the T-Rex from _Meet the Robinsons_. You know.' Ryan mimicked the scene from the film. 'I have a big head and little arms, I just don't think this plan was well thought out.'

'That's very sweet, and appropriate,' she giggled, then dipped into the bag once more, came up with a stegosaurus. 'Let me guess. I need an herbivore to go with the meat-eater?'

'Yes, from my little Greenpeace herbivore. Mallory insisted if Dell gave you the t-rex, you had to have a vegetarian in there too.'

'Tell them thank you.'

'And we'll see you in the morning to get things wrapped up,' Ryan told them both. 'Right now, I'm on my way home to see my kids. It's been a long-ass day.'

* * *

><p>When Ryan arrived home, he was thrilled to find the family just setting the table for dinner. It appeared to be Mexican night, with both beef and beans for Dell and Honey-Milk while he and Mally would have portobello mushrooms and beans over their tortillas with fresh pico de gallo and salsa verde Mallory loved so much.<p>

'Daddy!' Mallory flew into his arms, gave him a huge hug. 'You're home!'

'Yes, I am, what's all this?' he asked when he saw Mallory's chin tremble, her blue eyes fill up.

'Mama said at work today that you were there to stop someone from hurting one of the other police officers, and...and...'

'And Princess Celery has been impatiently waiting for you to make it home safely,' Dell said dryly, hoping the teasing of his little sister would mask his own relief. 'See Mally? He's home, safe and sound.'

'Okay.' But Mallory stuck close to her father as he peeled off his coat and secured his badge and service weapon in their childproof gun-safe before he sat down at the table where Honey-Milk was waiting.

'We have to say grace, Daddy,' she insisted. 'Can I do it?'

'Sure, baby.'

'In the name of the father, son and holy spirit,' Mallory dutifully recited as she crossed her little shoulders. 'Thank you God for our dinner, our home, our friends and family, and for making sure that Daddy made it home safely tonight after catching the bad guys. Amen.'

'Amen,' Honey-Milk echoed, then gave her husband an understanding look as she passed around the crunchy and chewy taco shells to the kids after they'd said grace. She knew full well how close her husband and his team came to losing one of their own that afternoon. 'Thought you could use some comfort food tonight, Kevin.'

'You thought right.'

'There's chocolate-cinnamon churros from The Salamander for dessert.'

'Oh, I do love you, Jennifer,' Ryan sighed and she winked at him.

'You can thank me later. Right now, let's dig in.'

'Dad, guess what we did in art class today,' Dell asked him, selecting his taco shells.

'What?'

As Ryan listened to his son talk about his latest painting, Mallory asking her mother which bowl was the veggie-friendly beans, he could feel the weight of the day just slip right off his shoulders.


	44. Try to Let It Go

'Okay, Mallory, time for lights out.'

Ryan went into his daughter's room, found her hugging her toy of the week as she clutched her well-loved copy of _Midnight in the Dollhouse_ in anticipation of him reading her the next chapter.

'Alright, Daddy, we're ready!'

'Mally.' Ryan came in and knelt beside her bed, kissed her forehead sweetly. 'I know we usually read before bedtime but tonight I need some alone time just me and Mama, okay?'

'Okay Daddy,' she sighed, then thrust out her knobbly-haired teddy bear. 'But you gotta tell Bugsy, okay?'

'Okay. Bugsy, I'm sorry there won't be any storytime tonight. What?' Ryan held the bear to his ear like he was listening to a secret. 'Oh, yeah, that's a great idea!'

'What is, Daddy?'

'Bugsy says he wants you to read to him instead, because you need some cuddle time too.'

'Okay, Daddy.' Mallory lifted her arms and hugged her father. 'Love you, night-night.'

'Love you too, Princess Broccoli.'

'It's Celery Daddy. Princess Celery.'

'Okay, Princess Celery. Only one chapter for Bugsy, then night-night, right?'

'Right.'

Ryan got up, went to Dell's room where the boy was lying on his back listening to his iPod, eyes closed as he bobbed his head in time to an unknown rhytjhm, his lips moving as he mouthed the words. Picking up his mini dino-claw print basketball Ryan lobbed it so it landed smack on Dell's stomach; the reaction was priceless - Dell all but leaped on the ceiling, letting out a loud 'Gah!' while looking around for the cuplrit, then flushing bright red when he saw his father in the doorway.

'If you wanted to scare me to death, Dad, why didn't you just put your gun to my ear! A lot nicer than a basketball to the jewels!'

'I'm sure your jewels are just fine, Delaney. Lights out in an hour, you've got a busy day tomorrow.'

'I know, I know. Hey Dad?'

'Yeah, buddy.'

Dell sat up, crossed his legs. 'I heard some of the kids say that busting up that people-traffic ring wasn't such a big deal because guys buy brides all the time with things called engagement rings. Is that true?'

'Some people believe that. But the letter of the law says that if Guy A gives Guy B money in exchange for a human being's life, that's wrong.'

'I think so too. And besides, an engagement ring is more like a promise than buying someone.'

'Oh?' Curious to hear his son's take on centuries entrenched social politics and graces, Ryan sat down on the desk chair opposite his son's bed. 'How do you figure?'

'Well, the guy and the girl are making a deal, right? To love each other and only each other until the end of time, and the guy gives the girl a ring and then when the time is right the girl has the babies. It balances out, because a fancy ring and a baby are both gifts, aren't they?'

'That's a very democratic and just way of looking at it, Dell,' Ryan agreed.

'That's what I think, and Tessi does too. It's why we're gonna get married when we're old enough.'

'Sounds like a plan, son.' He held out his fist and Dell bro-dapped knuckles with him before Ryan stood up; he wasn't surprised when Dell beckoned him close to give him a hug. 'Love you Dell.'

'Love you too Dad.'

Dell went back to his music and Ryan went to his own room where he stopped - his wife was lying in bed and from the way she'd gathered the sheets around her body it was quite obvious that she was wearing the bedsheets, her wedding rings and a smile.

'What is this?'

'The rest of your dessert,' Honey-Milk purred, sitting up so the sheet slipped to her lap and she pressed her body with her lush, naked breasts against her husband's chest. 'I've got some buttercream frosting flavoured massage oil, the edible kind. Or there's cherry Coke or-'

She was cut off when Ryan took her face in his hands, kissed her deeply, gratefully. 'Just you, Jennifer. All I ever need is just you, like this.'

'Okay.'

'Gimme a second, okay?'

Honey-Milk nodded and watched as her husband stripped for function, not performance so that when he came back to her he was as naked as she was. She ran her hands over his skin, felt the muscles tense and taut there. 'Kevin, let me rub you down, baby,' she murmured. 'It'll relax you and get your going all at the same time.'

'Jenny.' Ryan stroked a hand over her cheek. 'I can't believe I'm telling you this but I'm just too tired tonight, my love.'

'I know, I wasn't offering up wild yoga-posing sex, Kevin.' Honey-Milk put her hand on his cheek in a mirror gesture. 'You need a night of intimacy, but intimacy doesn't always mean sex. Now, are you going to let me rub you down or what?'

'Rub away, my treasure.'

Ryan flopped over on his stomach on to the bed, closed his eyes as he let the day slip away from him. When he felt the weight shift on the bed, felt his wife's hands on his back, he sighed greatly. She had such amazing hands, they were so soft yet strong and as she smoothed some sweetly-scented oil onto his skin, he let out a low moan of appreciation.

'Jenn that feels so good,' he half-muttered into the pillow.

'I'm sure it does.'

'I'm...I want to...'

'I know, baby,' Honey-Milk murmured, and wasn't at all disappointed when she heard Ryan's breathing slowing, slowing, until she heard the buzzing from his nose and knew he was out for the count. 'Mission accomplished,' she murmured to herself, and got up to get a robe, run herself a nice hot bath.

* * *

><p>Ryan awoke sometime later; his mouth was dry and his head slightly fuzzy. A quick snoop at the bedside clock told him it was just past midnight, though it felt like some time later next week. He looked around and realized he'd fallen asleep on his wife, as he was still buck naked and face-down in the bed.<p>

Feeling like a first class asshole for that alone Ryan went to his side of the closet, found his robe. He wandered into the living room and sighed in self-loathing when he saw his bride lounging on the couch with a mini bowl of frozen yogurt while she watched the time-shift of _Space Coowboy_. 'Hey sweetie.'

'Hey!' Honey-Milk hit the mute button, lifted her feet off the couch so he could sit down. 'Look who's awake.'

'I'm so sorry, Jenny, I-'

'Kevin, it's okay you didn't want sex after a very long and trying day when you looked like you were going to fall asleep at the dinner table.' Honey-Milk gave him a reassuring hug. 'But you did miss me in the bathtub all hot and wet and soapy.'

'See, that makes me feel even crumbier.'

'What's got you so turned around about this one?'

'I can't help thinking about all the things Melissa controlled in Charlotte's life, and how she tried to treat her like a little puppet. She was no better than the men who bought women from her.'

'I know, but there's so much that Charlotte brought on herself.'

'Yeah, there is. What kind of adult lets her mother control her like that?'

'Well look at Andrea.'

That had Ryan stopping. 'Andrea?'

'Yeah. Her family was horrible to her. They treated her like some annoying pet, not an equal member of the group. Or are you forgetting when she was abducted and you when postal on her brother-in-law because we found out Andrea was three weeks pregnant with Nessa?'

'Kinda hard to forget that,' Ryan agreed; he'd actually had nightmares about it for a week afterward that someone was goin to harm his friend and her baby.

'And Andrea overcame it because she knew they were wrong, she took the high road by being strong and independent because that's in her nature. It was in Charlotte's nature to be sneaky and devious.'

'Huh. Hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe she did have a streak of Dexter Morgan in her.'

'Considering you said the lawyers are pushing for diminished capacity, that should tell you something right there too.'

'Yeah.' Ryan rubbed a hand over his face, sniffed at her bowl. 'There anymore ice cream?'

'Here, you can finish this up.' Honey-Milk passed him her bowl.

'Oh, so I get your leftovers?'

'You could get up and get a fresh bowl but that would mean waiting for this.'

Honey-Milk turned him to face her, and simply unbelted her robe, giving Ryan a view of her naked body. He looked her up and down, the unbelted his own robe, pressed himself against her. 'Ice cream can wait.'


	45. Cherry On the Top

_Okay, here we are! The last ch of this case-heavy fic! But not to worry, this is one author who knows the value of balance so the next one is all about the girls - more specifically it's an Andrea story! Yea! As always many many thanks to my girls **tayababy, BabyCastle09, Alex Beckett, Ariel 119, NotJana **and **anom****alymona**_, _your impact on me is felt every day and in every word. Oh, and leave your love in review form!_

* * *

><p>The next morning, across town, Lanie was awoken far too early on her day off; she didn't like interruptions to those rare mornings she got to sleep in, nor did she like them on days when she had plans with her husband and son.<p>

'Go away. Far, far away,' she chanted, making Dave groan, roll to wrap his arm aruond her midsection.

'Answer it and tell whoever it is they are interrupting early morning wake-up sex.'

'You got it.'

Lanie felt the thrill of her husband's hands on her body as she picked up her cellphone; thrill turned to annoyance edged with anger when she saw it was Karpowski's mobile. 'Damn it, I'm off today,' she mumbled before answering. 'Doctor Parrish-Robbins.'

'Good morning, Lanie, I know it's early but I need you to be in my office for eight am sharp.'

'All due respect, Captain, today is my day off and I've made plans with my family, and-'

'You are to be here for eight am sharp at the request of the Chief Field Agent of the FBI and the Deputy Chief of Detectives for South Manhattan.'

'Very well, I'll be there.'

Lanie hung up, then picked Dave's wrist up, kiss his palm. 'I've been summoned by the FBI Chief Field Agent and Deputy Chief Montgomery. Finn's going to be angry with me.'

'Leave that to me,' Dave said. 'I know how to handle little boys wanting their mama's full attention.'

'And I don't? Sorry,' she apologized immediately, shoving her hand through her hair. 'It's barely six am and I was looking forward to sleeping in.'

'I know. Leave it with me while you are getting ready for your meeting.'

Throughout her shower and picking out a suit to wear - a meeting with such uppity-up law enfrocers definitely required a suit instead of the usual pressed pants or jeans and nice blouse for field work - Lanie was so focused on the fact she wasn't getting to see her children off to school this morning that she barely had time to wonder what the meeting itself was actually about.

When she headed for the kitchen, saw Carey and Violet getting their backpacks ready while Finn put his own bag together she could only heave a heavy sigh. 'I'm so sorry to break my promise, my babies,' she started but it was little Finn who waved her off.

'No worries, Mama,' he said cheerfully. 'Daddy tol' us you gotta go see Misser Chief Mon'gom-ery and the Eff-Bee-Eye for a meetin'. Are you gettin' a puh-rize fo' bein' so ah-some?'

'I don't know Finneran,' Lanie laughed.

'You nee' a puh-rize, you so goo' at bein' a dead pee-pills doc-tor.'

'Mama is a pathologist,' Carey told his brother importantly. 'You don't call the dentist a tooth doctor, right?'

'Righ' Carey.' Finn frowned a little. 'How I say it?'

'Pathologist.'

'Path-a-gist.'

'Close, try again. Path-ol-o-gist.'

'Patha-lo-gis'.'

'That works,' Lanie giggled and gave her children all hugs. 'Okay time to go see what the mystery is about.'

* * *

><p>When Lanie arrived at the Twelfth Precinct, she wasn't surprised to see Ryan, Adam or Watkins there, Watkins looking a little florid in the cheeks but otherwise whole and healthy. What did surprise her was seeing Claire Murphy and Bryan Patrick back, along with a tough-look black man, Captain Karpowski and of course the beloved Roy Montgomery.<p>

'Doctor, it's been too long,' he greeted her warmly, surprising Lanie by giving her an affectionate hug. 'How are your babies?'

'Not babies anymore. Finn's already four and he's the youngest.'

'And Dave's doing well?'

'Yeah, he's on line for a promotion to lead medic.'

'Good, good. Be sure to tell him I said hello and thank him for taking care of Patrick and Cecelia and Lucy for me.'

'I will.' Lanie had remembered that morning well, when Dave had come home from the night shift and said that he'd done a run to transport the former captain's very-pregnant daughter-in-law to the hospital as her water had broken in the middle of the night.

She looked over, saw the tough look black man had come up to stand beside Montgomery and Lanie offered her hand. 'Doctor Lanie Parrish-Robbins, OCME.'

'Chief Field Agent Ray Keith, FBI.'

He had a hand hard as granite but his touch was light, which told Lanie he'd once been a lean machine law-enforcing machine on the streets and continued to do so from a desk these days.

'So, what's the deal, why are we here?' Adam asked, now that the pleasantries were out of the way.

'I felt it was warranted, despite the fact that you closed the case less than twenty-four hours ago to inform you that Chief Field Agent Keith has put your names forward for commendation of excellence to law enforcement,' Karpowski informed them.

'In English, sir?' Ryan laughed, hoping the swell of excitement in his belly wasn't just a tease.

'In English, Detective, the FBI is giving you a medal. Everyone, including you Doctor Parrish-Robbins,' Montgomery added, nodding at Lanie.

'A medal? For what?'

'The human trafficking case has been one of the most difficult investigations my field has ever had to face and by letting my agents partner with you to our mutual benefit, both your case and ours were solved definitively,' Keith explained. 'For that, we felt it necessary to award your hard work.'

'Esposito too?' Ryan asked, knowing it woudl chap his partner's ass if he were left out.

'Esposito too, he's in the field right now.'

'And in the spirit of reciprocity, we are returning the gesture and awarding to you-' Karpowski looked at Claire and Bryan '-the Bronze Star Meritorious Commendation of Integrity for conduct above and beyond the call of duty.'

Lanie imagined the look on her face was identical to the one on Claire and Bryan's faces - one of total shocked appreciation. She watched with great admiration as the federal agents tried not to show their excitement like children at Christmas and remain professionally calm and grateful.

'Thank you, Captain, that's a great honour,' Bryan said neutrally.

'You also deserve a reward for your hard work in assisting my officers in the research into their case and suspects.'

'The official presentation will be a joint affair in May, when we have the graduation ceremony for the new cadets and the promotion of detectives and captains,' Montgomery added, 'but I didn't see any reason for you to find out later since the case is still fresh on everyone's minds.'

'Thank you sir.' All Lanie could think of was Finn that morning, saying it was okay she had to miss family breakfast for a super-important meeting since it might mean she was getting a 'prize' as he'd called it. Little guy had been right on the money, and Lanie decided right there on the spot that she would be treating her family to their favourite take-away in celebration that night along with a double-feature of _DragonVale Tales: The Movie_ for the kids and _Cat People_ for herself and Dave.

'I'm sorry to call you in for such a short meeting on your day off Lanie, but I sincerely believe you'd have been might sore at me if I'd wait to tell you,' Karpowski said to her, and Lanie nodded her agreement. 'Well, now that we've made everyone's day, how about we continue to uphold all those laws?'

Taking this to mean the meeting was adjourned, Lanie left with the cops waited until she saw Karpowski close the door to her office before she jumped up and down and wrapped her arms around Ryan Adam and Watkins each. 'Oh, this is so exciting! Us lowly ME's never get medals!'

'You deserve it Lanie,' Ryan told her genuinely, then smiled at Adam and Watkins. 'All of you deserve it.'

'You too, Ryan,' Watkins said, absently rubbing the back of her head; she still had a little knot there.'

'Seems to me like this is going to be reason for a party this weekend at the Old Haunt,' Lanie commented.

'Yes, it certainly is,' Ryan agreed, then pursed his lips when his communicator went off. 'Ryan.'

'Take care you guys, see you on the weekend,' Lanie said as she headed for the elevator. He nodded at her as his cellphone went off.

'Ryan.'

'It's Espo, you done with the meeting with the captain? Can you meet me on scene?'

'Sure thing, bro.'

'What did she want?'

'You'll find out when I'm there in person.' Ryan hung up, then called home to hear his wife's voice; she was on nights and knew she'd be still up after getting the kids ready for school. 'Hey sweetness, can you do me a favour?'

'I think so, why?'

'Can you order us Bamboo Garden tonight?'

'What are we celebrating?'

'Tell you tonight. Just make sure you get-'

'Extra kung-pao sauce on your deep-fried tofu I know,' she laughed. 'Love you.'

'Love you too.'

Ryan hung up, headed for the elevator to go and meet Esposito on scene. He stepped into the car, turned to see Watkins had gone to her desk and Adam was being summoned by Newman for something; the sight of it made him smile. As nice as the medals were, nothing beat a great family - work or otherwise - to always have your back.


End file.
